


The Killers of Possum Springs

by Reader010



Category: Night In The Woods (Video Game)
Genre: Denial, F/F, F/M, Guilt, M/M, Missing Persons, Mystery, Platonic Relationships, Post-Canon, What to do when you accidentally murder half your hometown
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2019-07-27 05:51:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 52,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16212767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reader010/pseuds/Reader010
Summary: There’s a lot of fleeting emotions drawn to the surface by the dozens of white paper flyers that dot the streets of Possum Springs in the weeks following their descent into the mines. Balancing their guilt, grief and uncertainty, Mae’s friends must come to terms with what they’ve done, all the while trying to make sense of the one missing person report which baffles them still.





	1. Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hours after the game's epilogue, the gang celebrates their bassist's merciless murder of their eardrums with pizza and pierogis, all the while ignoring the consequences of their adventure into the mines the night prior. Yet behind closed doors, Gregg confides in his boyfriend, and Bea helps Mae prepare for an unsavory conversation with her parents.

_Tuesday, November 7 th_

They were okay.

Better than okay, really. The four of them were shoveling greasy pizza down their gullets, laughing between bites as some conversation between Gregg and Mae spiraled into absurdity. Most importantly, they were alive. Living and tying desperately to focus on anything else besides the reality of events that had all occurred within the last 24 hours.

Just one night ago, Mae and Bea had been sleeping on the couch in Gregg and Angus’ living room. And only a few hours after that, the four had emerged from the well after caving in the old mines, likely killing the cult of nearly a dozen people inside.

 _A cult._ The idea still shook all of them to the bone. _In Possum Springs_. It was no surprise that they turned their minds towards anything other than such a realization: even the most menial of things garnered the full force of their attention.

“Hell yeah!” Gregg cheered through a mouthful of pierogi, savoring the fruits of his victory as the rest of the table reacted expectedly to his game with Mae. The cat was already loading up another dumpling into her hand, like her arm was a cannon and the food her ammo. Angus smiled contently, inspired by the expression of childish enjoyment that flashed across his partner’s face, while Bea shook her head at the disorderly pair despite the small smile that betrayed her.

“If I had known most of these were gonna end up on the floor, I definitely wouldn’t have agreed to order them after the pizza,” the croc complained. She was less bothered by the others’ wastefulness and more concerned with the looks the table was receiving from the customers and staff of the Clik Clak.

“You’re just mad because you want a pierogi but won’t work for it,” Mae rebuked, shifting her aim towards the reptile. “Open up.”

“I’m literally one of the three people paying for the meal. With money that I earned by working,” Bea shot back. “Which qualifies as working for the food that I paid for.”

“That’s irrelevant.”

“It certainly is not,” Bea snorted.

“I’m open!” Gregg called the cat’s attention back to him, and a finely placed shot nearly landed the dumpling into his gaping jaw. Rather, the hot, greasy pierogi slapped against his muzzle, and the fox responded to the first degree burn accordingly, yelping out a shrill cry of pain. With his napkin on hand, Angus dabbed the grease off his boyfriend’s face, earning him a thankful kiss on the cheek.

“Your turn Bea!” Mae shifted the focus of the conversation back towards the crocodile, readying another burn-inducing projectile. Her friend had other plans.

“You’re like some kind of sadist,” Bea asserted. “First we’re forced to listen to your bass, and now you want to hurl hot pierogis at us and burn our faces.”

“The face-burning part really isn’t the objective,” she argued, pointedly ignoring the comment about her admittedly sub-par performance during band practice. How was she supposed to play well if they kept coming up with new songs without telling her? And it wasn’t like the cat had much time to practice between the events of the last week. “It’s about the glory! And the cheesy goodness!”

“I’ll try.” All eyes swung around to the willing participant, surprised to see one Angus Delaney grinning semi-confidently. He’d seen firsthand the _horrible_ injuries that had been inflicted upon his boyfriend due to his failings with the sport, but the bear at least wanted to try one of the dumplings before they all ended up on the floor.

“Alright, alright.” Mae clenched one eye shut and aimed her shot. Gregg shifted to watch the event with his full concentration, and Bea shook her head disparagingly. The pierogi launched from the cat’s paw and soared over the table, traveling farther than any of Gregg’s trials. Miraculously, Angus tilted his head back at the last second and lunged to catch the falling pasta shell, closing his mouth around the hot, cheesy taste of victory.

“That’s my Cap’n! First try!” Gregg cheered excitedly, hugging close to his partner. Angus chewed methodically, enjoying the taste of cheddar and jalapeño, while Bea rolled her eyes, betrayed by the one other truly responsible “adult” at the table.

“You realize you have like, no excuse now, right Bea?” Mae smirked from across the length of the table, deviously gesturing towards Bea with a new pierogi as if to throw it.

“Besides not being a child?” She pretended to think it over for a moment. “No, I suppose I don’t.”

“C’mon Bea!” Gregg egged her on, eager to convert another to their childish antics. “Do it! Do it! Do it!”

“They are very delicious pierogis,” Angus supplied.

Bea sighed, dropping her head into her hands. Not for the first time, she wondered how exactly her life had ended up like this. When she turned her face back up towards her friends, she still found three sets of enthusiastic eyes trained on her, and Bea realized there was really only one way out of this.

* * *

Seven.

It took seven pierogis before Bea could finally catch one in her mouth. Sure, Mae could blame her poor aim for part of that, but the crocodile had the largest mouth out of the group by far.

“Seven, Bea,” Mae repeated, letting the words ring out through the crocodile’s car. “ _Seven_.”

“Mmm hmm,” Bea hummed, unfazed. Her inexperience pained the cat more than it affected herself.

“That’s like… sad. We really gotta up your game.” Mae decided.

“Is that so?” The crocodile snorted, amused.

“Yeah. I mean, there’s like, starving kids,” the cat continued. “I haven’t _seen_ them but they’re definitely out there. And your lack of skill is just… wasteful, to be honest.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Usually, Bea would be annoyed by the other’s ramblings. Now, the distraction from what threatened to overtake either of their minds in the silence was enough reason for her to appreciate senseless conversation.

“Please do. You keep providing the pierogis, and I’ll train you up to be a champion.” Bea responded with a noncommittal hum, and their banter seemed to reach its conclusion. It seemed Mae’s skill at continuing a one-sided conversation could only carry the two of them for so long before even the cat needed to reach for more to say. “And, uh… thanks for the ride.”

“No problem.” Another pause, and Bea decided it was only fair that she now take the initiative. “What’s with the rush, anyhow? It’s not even dark yet. I figured Gregg and you would be up to something.”

“Not tonight.” Mae guiltily ran her hand across the back of her neck, her mind quickly racing to the duos’ favorite haunts. Haunts which would go un-haunted, now. “Angus… isn’t the biggest fan of our crimes.”

“You don’t say,” Bea deadpanned. It had been obvious to the crocodile that the cat’s criminal streak with Gregg had annoyed Angus since Mae’s return. Mae, with her seemingly unparalleled inability to read people, seemed to have missed that.

“Yeah.” Mae confirmed, not picking up on the other’s sarcasm. “And besides, I sorta promised my parents I’ll be around for dinner.” Breakfast-for-dinner, to be exact. Mae’s mouth watered at the thought of it, even though the pizza and pierogis from their after-band practice hangout hadn’t even settled in her stomach yet. _There’s always extra room for pancakes._

“What’s the occasion?”

“I dunno.” Mae tapped her claws anxiously against her knee. “Guess my mom’s pretty upset about the whole almost dying thing. And then leaving to meet you guys at the apartment.”

“Oh.” Bea coasted the car along the road, following a gentle curve in the street. A few stray autumn leaves, which lay discarded by the curbside, were swept up by the motion of Bea’s wheels, and floated back down to the surface as the vehicle continued to drift onward. “Yeah. That makes sense.”

Keratin claws traced through over of the fabric of the cat’s pants, searching for something inexpensive to pierce as the anxiety flooded over Mae. “She wants me to talk about college.”

The silence that ensured prompted Bea to glance over at the other, worriedly finding Mae Borowski fumbling awkwardly with her paws. “…So what?”

Mae sat silent. The car rocked over the broken road. “…I don’t think I can,” a quiet voice escaped her, betraying her nervousness.

“Why not?”

“I don’t really know how.”

The crocodile swore beneath her breath as she unintentionally hit the pothole atop the hill of Maple Street, distracted by her conversation with Mae. Unwillingly, Bea forced herself to pay better attention to the road, before hazarding a sideways glance over at the cat. “What do you mean you don’t know how? I mean… you told me.”

“Yeah.” More silence, and Bea risked losing Mae to the depths of her mind entirely. If the last few days had been any indicator, that was not a good idea.

A moment later, the question sprung from her lips before she had the opportunity to stop it. “…Why?”

“Huh?” Mae shook away her thoughts. “Why what?”

“Last night on the couch.” Late at night, after they’d gotten the pizza delivered and Germ had left; when all four of them had stayed inside the couple’s apartment, unwilling to risk the dangerous trek outside. Before Mae had so stupidly tried to confront the cult member alone. “Why did you tell me?”

The cat had unveiled it all: Andy Cullen, college, everything about her condition. Mae had told Bea about the shapes which had mocked her existence for years, and the crocodile just couldn’t piece together why. It wasn’t like Gregg wasn’t there. It wasn’t as if Mae and Bea had been best friends for the five years before she left for college. The two of them had hardly talked since 7th grade, and by the time Mae had returned, their relationship had shifted dramatically. But now…

Now they sat together in a car talking around Mae’s dissociation while pretending that last night had never happened.

“I guess I don’t really know.” Mae responded. Her brain had been like jelly after her injury in the woods, and maybe that was just what she needed to shake loose her inhibitions and tell somebody about her mess of a mind. Or perhaps the week of sleeplessness due to Black Goat’s nightmares had deprived her of any ability to think logically. Maybe… she was just so desperate for something to hold onto that she spilled everything to the first person she could, to the first person she felt truly safe around doing so.

Mae really didn’t know why; she only knew that she was glad that she had.

The car zoomed past Bea’s apartment, and they both were hyperaware of the waning distance between them and their destination. Bea’s claws smacked against the back of the steering wheel as she racked her brain for something to say in order to assure the quiet cat that things would be fine.

“It’ll be alright Mae.” The croc enunciated each word slowly, as if to prove to Mae that she was telling the truth. “Your parents will understand.”

“…yeah.” They probably would, and the cat was well aware of the fact. If she knew anything about her parents, it was that they would go through hell and high water for their only daughter. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“…What?” Bea snorted at the absurdity. “Why is that?”

“I know I haven’t been… the greatest, Bea.” Mae looked out past the passenger window, toward the neighborhood houses they passed on her right. Anywhere was better than paying attention to the girl beside her. “I dropped out of college, bashed a kid’s face in and can’t hold down even the simplest of jobs. It’s my fault that we’re gonna lose the house and if they knew about my effed-up head that’d probably just give them even more stress to deal with. Not to mention the money problems that come with therapy and medication.”

The car began to slow as Bea pulled up to the curb in front of the house in question. The crocodile cursed the limited time she had to respond to the cat, and desperately searched for something to soothe her. “Your parents are good people Mae. If they pay more attention to you than some house, that’s what they’re supposed to do. You don’t have to feel bad because they care about you.”

 _They shouldn’t have to._ “I’m twenty years old and feel more like a kid than I ever did.” Mae leaned against the car door. Even though they’d reached her house, she made no move to leave the car.

The pair sat in silence. Eventually, Bea put her car out of ignition and the pair surrendered themselves to the temporary quiet. The late fall evening bathed them in the fading light of a sunset over the horizon, and the only sound that reached them were the cars passing down Maple Street. Bea remained motionless, trapped in thought, wading through a mixture of her concerns and Mae’s. The cat brooded quietly.

Eventually, the car turned back on, but only so long that Bea might open her window in order to light a cigarette. After the first drag, the long-delayed answer came from the crocodile. “You know why I’m jealous of you, right?”

Red pupils shifted from the floor towards the smoking reptile. “College, right?”

“No–I mean, besides that.” Mae shook her head, not exactly seeing where the other was going with this. “I work, like, 60 hours a week, 6 days a week usually. It literally takes most of my time everyday just to keep the store afloat and make enough money to survive.” Bea sighed, taking another drag of her cigarette. She let the smoke drift through her snout, out her nostrils and into the autumn air beyond the open window. “It’s a huge responsibility, and I _hate_ it. But I have to do it.”

Mae curled up tighter in the seat next to her friend, not sure if this conversation was meant to make her feel better or worse. So far, all the cat felt was infinitely more useless.

“You’re immature, Mae, but god damnit if I didn’t wish I could be too.”

“Huh?” Knit eyebrows and confusion was the cat’s response.

“Some of the shit you and Gregg get into sounds like genuine fun. I mean, most of it is absolutely crazy, but that’s just because I have common sense and you two don’t.” Another breath, in through the cigarette, out through the nose. “It’s not much of a secret, but nobody really wants to be responsible. If it was up to me, I would be smashing lightbulbs or crossbow shooting with you guys. But it’s not, because I have bills and worries and whatever looks like fun to you guys looks like a possible injury and medical expenses to me.”

“What are you trying to say, Bea?”

The crocodile sighed, nearly dropping the burning stick from her mouth. “Don’t feel guilty about being immature, Mae. I mean, it’s not like you haven’t been going through some shit. Just… don’t try to hide that from your parents, either.” There was a momentary pause before Bea realized something. “Except the cult. Definitely don’t tell them about that.”

“Aye aye, captain.” Mae smiled despite herself, already well-aware that any conversation about the underground murder party was not one for her parents. Especially since she herself had hardly sifted through the experience from the night prior. Hopefully, she would continue to put that off, burying it neatly in the back of her mind, where it would stay until she died.

“What, am I Angus now?” Bea teased, happy to lighten the mood that had settled over them.

“Only if I’m your Bug.” Mae opened the car door, deciding it was time to let Bea go home for the night. She couldn’t keep the crocodile hostage in her own car on the street corner all night.

“…Nope.” Bea decided, already hating the idea of using the couple’s nicknames. Mae was no Bug.

“Hmm.” Mae unbuckled and swung out of the car. “We’ll have to work on our pet names.”

“Of course,” Bea agreed between drags of her cigarette. “You can be Mae and I’ll be Bea.”

“You can _be_ Bea, or you can _be_ Beabea.”

“So I get a choice?”

“Nope,” Mae declared, making her way up the sidewalk before her house. Bea watched her through the open window, as the pair ironed out the finer details of their “new” nicknames.

“I want out of this manipulative relationship already.” The crocodile watched the other bounce away from her car with renewed vigor, the banter of their conversation refreshing the previously downtrodden Mae.

Bea reached for the stick, ready to shift the car back into drive, when the realization hit her. “Hey Mae? Do you mind if I–” The cat turned back to face the other from the steps of her house, and she quickly recognized how stupid her question would’ve sounded: Mae was supposed to have a conversation with her parents, anyway. “You know what? Never mind.” The car shifted into gear and Bea turned back towards the road ahead of her. “Catch you around, Maeday.”

The crocodile sped off without seeing the other’s wave and Mae was left standing confused on her front steps. As the red vehicle passed by once again after it made a U-turn, Mae turned back towards her front door and prepared her entrance.

Inside, she quickly discovered she was alone.

“Mom? Dad?” For each calling, she received the deafening response of silence. Parading through the entrance, she found the living room and kitchen both empty, with a notable lack of expectant parents awaiting her return. “…I’m home!” No answer, even though both of them had supposedly taken the day off.

 _Oh._ Mae noticed a slip of paper casually abandoned on the kitchen table. Snagging it with the tip of her claw, she pulled the note towards her and read it to herself.

_Went to Ham Panther for some groceries. Picking up bacon and blueberries for tonight._

_–Mom._

“Sweet.” Blueberry pancakes and bacon for her second dinner–there wasn’t any chance that she would be losing that extra weight anytime soon, huh? Mae dropped the note back onto the table. Guess she had a bit of time to kill; no matter how little, it was better to distract herself with something rather than allow her anxieties to flare up again.

 _Demontower could be fun._ She thought, moving towards the stairs. That, or she could practice the band’s new song. Cracking open one of the old ghost stories Granddad had left her was also an option; it had been awhile since she had read any of them. Or she could lie in her bed and veg out, preventing her from doing any of those fun things. That was also a distinct possibility.

About a quarter of the way up the stairs, the cat picked up on an unidentifiable odor, yet only when she was half way up did she realize the scent was following her. A quick sniff of her garments had her recoiling away.

“Ugh.” She didn’t really know what she had expected. She couldn’t remember the last time she had showered; it had likely been before her trip to the hospital over 3 days ago. In that time, she had been chased down by a cult, knocked unconscious in the woods, hospitalized, and left to sleep on Gregg and Angus’ couch, after her oily robot child had been there. From there, she’d proceeded to descend into some mines, cause a cave-in, trek through cave water, and–well, you get the gist.

Point was, Mae didn’t realize how gross she smelt, and discovering it almost threatened to spoil her appetite for breakfast-dinner.

Almost.

 _I’ve got to handle this before I do anything._ The cat decided. The situation was so dire that even she recognized the need for a fraction of responsibility. Mae probably should have showered last night, but she’d simply been too tired from the experience; she definitely should’ve done it that morning, yet her eagerness to hit the town with a clear head for the first time in weeks had won out. Forcing herself up the rest of the stairs, Mae committed herself to a lengthy lather after she grabbed an identical outfit from her room.

 _Clothes, shower, and then dinner with the parents._ What a lively night she had planned. _With serious conversations about my failing mental health, to boot._

 _Well, it can’t always be ghost-hunting, cult-chasing shenanigans._ Sometimes you gotta have depressingly serious conversations with your parents about your effed-up head and your inability to perform basic tasks outside the safety of your hometown. _Yippee._

The cat sighed, steeling herself. _No, Bea was right. Mom and Dad are there for you._ Forcing herself to act confident, Mae pushed open the door to her room, ready to attack the night ahead of her. But first on the agenda: a shower. Because she stunk.

* * *

They killed people. Either directly, through the collapse of the mines, or indirectly, through the subsequent starvation and dehydration being trapped would cause, even now, while the fox lay comfortably in bed. People were dead because of them.

Gregg stared up at the ceiling above him emptily, unable to process the sinking feeling settling in his stomach like a stone. Sleep escaped him, despite the warm, snuggly fur of the bear in his embrace.

He hated this sensation; hated the quiet that hung over the room as both him and Angus pretended to be asleep, despite the fact that each was very much aware of the other’s wakefulness. Still, when Gregg moved to start a conversation, rather to perpetuate their miserable wallow in silence, he only saw one way fit to begin.

“You awake Cap’n?”

“Mmm hmm,” the bear hummed in acknowledgement. Gregg restlessly shifted his position to face his boyfriend, ending up laying on top of the cuddly bear, his muzzle buried near his chest.

“Me too,” the fox stated the obvious.

“Really now.” Angus grinned despite himself.

“It’s like I’m not even tired.” Gregg knew it seemed ridiculous, but his body was acting like it wasn’t even nighttime and they hadn’t each worked an 8-hour shift while endlessly toiling with the events of the previous night in their minds.

“I know what you mean.” Angus really did, because he felt it too. Gregg’s pupils darted up to meet the other’s eyes. Despite the darkness, his searching gaze found the chestnut hues of his boyfriend’s irises, unmasked by the nightly removal of his glasses.

“I… I don’t think I can sleep.” Gregg admitted after the momentary silence. It was as if the pair was hoping for unconsciousness to overtake them amidst the long pauses in their conversation. Neither of them moved much, each too content to be beside the warmth of the other’s body.

“…Same.” They were both reluctant to mention why. Putting it into words would make it all seem much too real–make the experience an actual thing, rather than a feverish nightmare that their brains worked hastily to repress.

The truth was, they’d been down there just 24 hours ago. It had only been one night since they’d caused a cave-in, brought down the cult, saved Mae and learned the fate of a friend who hadn’t been so lucky. Just one night since they murdered the murderers and sealed their horrific hole away from the world.

Why did he feel so guilty?

“It was a lot easier to sleep last night,” Gregg admitted, wishing that tonight could be very much the same.

Angus chuckled. “Oh yeah. You passed right out on the couch. I came back from changing and found you completely out of it. Had to carry you to bed myself.”

“I was exhausted,” Gregg corroborated. “After the night we had, I don’t know where you found the energy to change.” They continued to talk around the event like it was a night on the town or a party in the woods, nothing like the sinister reality that it was. It had already been so late and the two were both mentally and physically drained. The fact that they were able to get up for work the next day was a miracle in and of itself, possible only thanks to the magical properties of coffee.

“I’ll admit, I was tempted just to join you on the couch,” the bear admitted.

“And why didn’t you?” The fox rubbed his muzzle against the chest of his boyfriend absentmindedly, pushing against his nightshirt and breathing his scent in through it. “Seems like a lot less hassle than dragging me to off to bed.”

“…” Angus responded to the other’s gesture of affection with the gentle stroking of his back, even as he pondered an answer to his questioning. “I mean… I would’ve, but Mae had slept there a few hours before.”

“…So?”

“I… I mean this in the nicest way possible, Gregg.” The fox raised one eyebrow quizzically at the other, unsure what exactly Angus was about to suggest. He knew his boyfriend had some… _problems_ with Mae, especially since Gregg seemed to revert back to his old activities when he was around her, but he hadn’t believed that had extended to a refusal to even sleep where she had been before. Fortunately, Angus had another explanation. “…But Mae smells.”

“Ha ha, yeah.” Gregg giggled, unable to really dispute that. “Mae does smell.”

The silence returned, and the two of them laid silently in each other’s arms, allowing their body heat and blankets to shield them from the cold of the late autumn night. Yet the only way to protect each other from the dark thoughts that seeped into the mind was through their vocalization. And as much as the pair wanted to keep the events of the night prior buried, they needed to bring it up eventually.

“Hey Cap’n?” Gregg asked quietly.

“Yeah Bug?”

“Do you think we’re murderers?”

The question chased away any sleepiness that had snuck up on the bear throughout their casual banter. A chill ran down Angus’ spine as he heard the sincerity underlying his boyfriend’s question, and he shook his head. “No.” He squeezed the fox trapped in his embrace, trying his best to comfort him. “No, I don’t.”

“But… those cult members are probably all dead now.” Or going to die, with the slow passage of time. Which in reality, was much worse.

“…Probably.” Angus sure hoped they were, which didn’t exactly reflect too well on him.

“We caused the cave-in, Angus.” Gregg could close his eyes and still picture the horrible screeching of the falling elevator, collapsing the mineshaft around them and leaving the four in pitch-black darkness; the ensuing fear as they heard no immediate reply from Mae, and the sympathy as her delirious laughter slowly melted into sobbing.

“We didn’t mean to,” Angus argued. “It was only self-defense.”

“Against the single cult member that went after Mae.” Gregg wiggled uncomfortably at the thought, unable to chase away the guilt. “All the others were willing to let us go.”

“And they were equally willing to kidnap and sacrifice whoever they deemed unworthy.” The cult members who willingly kidnapped and threw people into a hole for their dark “God” were hardly worth their pity, in Angus’ opinion. “They were still killers. Murderers who had killed and would gladly kill again if given a chance.”

“…Like they killed Casey.” The words marched forth solemnly from the fox’s mouth, even as Gregg closed his eyes in response to the reality they betrayed.

“Bug…” Angus stroked the arm of his partner lovingly, trying to provide comfort in whatever way he could. The conversation reached a fork in the metaphorical road, and the fuzzy mammal was not sure how to proceed. On one hand, dispelling any guilt from the fox’s mind was a priority. On the other… Casey’s fate was a tragedy they were poorly equipped to deal with amidst all the chaos of discovering a cult.

“I really wanted to believe he made it, you know?” Gregg sniffled, drying his eyes against Angus’ white nightshirt. “I convinced myself that he really had just hopped a train out of this place. I thought that for freaking months.” Angus’ heart panged with sympathy as the desperation poured forth from his boyfriend’s voice; of course, the bear had also been friends with Casey, but Gregg and Casey had been something else entirely. Them and Mae had been inseparable since 7th grade. “And I was happy for him. A bit upset that he hadn’t told us anything, but… I could understand. I thought he had made his clean break from Possum Springs.”

Gregg balled the loose fabric of his boyfriend’s pajama top in his hand, clenching reflexively as the anger and guilt clamored to overtake him. “All this time, I was happy for him. Happy, even though he’d been decaying at the bottom of some hole, sacrificed to some demon that a few murder-crazy dads from a secret cult decided to worship.”

“It’s over now, Bug.” Angus tightened his embrace around the smaller mammal, and Gregg welcomed the opportunity to smother his cries into the other’s chest. “At the very least, we made sure they got what they deserved.” Just the thought of people like that, living out the rest of their lives amongst the members of Possum Springs, unidentified and unpunished for their horrendous deeds, upset the bear.

“I just… wish it didn’t have to be us.” Gregg pulled away from the other, if only to meet his sympathetic gaze. “That’s not something we’re supposed to be responsible for.” His entire shift, the fox had expected the news of missing persons to sweep over the town. There’d been nothing yet, except for the rumblings he’d witnessed: the whisperings of absent workers during Snack Falcon’s lunchtime rush.

“It shouldn’t have been us, but it was,” Angus agreed. “And if we hadn’t done it, nothing would’ve stopped them from doing what they always had.” He pulled the fox’s face close, and pressed his lips to the yellow fur of his forehead. “Without us, there would’ve been more Caseys. More missing kids; more innocent lives, wasted senselessly.”

“…You’re right.” Most of the time, Angus was. Still, a hollow pit sat lodged in Gregg’s stomach. Even if what they had done was justified, there was more reason for guilt to tear at their souls. “I guess I just don’t like the idea of how this will affect everyone else in town. I don’t like thinking about all the families who are suddenly missing a dad, all the kids who will grow up fatherless and poor.”

“In my experience,” Angus began, trying to pick the words carefully. “Growing up without a dad wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.” Gregg’s brain stuttered a moment before he realized what his boyfriend was implying. For the bear, his dad’s disappearance had been a blessing: Mr. Delaney had been a shitty man and a shittier father, who beat his son and had left the bear traumatized for much of his youth. If he were to show up now, the fox wouldn’t hesitate to make sure he disappeared again. But the situation with the cult was different. Or at least, Gregg assumed it was.

“My dad was a violent drunk, who came home intoxicated more times than sober,” Angus recalled. “And there’s a lot of vicious people out there that are just like him. Probably many more in Possum Springs alone.”

“What do you mean?”

“ _I mean_ , if there’s a group of violent demon worshippers who have no problem sacrificing the lives of innocent people, then they probably aren’t all the shining example of fatherhood for their kids, anyway.”

“…Huh. That actually makes a lot of sense.” At least Gregg _hoped_ it did, because it made his feel a little better about unintentionally murdering them all if they were anything close to Angus’ own dad. “Still. This whole situation is pretty shitty.”

“Our entire lives here are pretty shitty,” Angus corrected. “ _Pretty shitty_ is the perpetual state of Possum Springs.”

That, at least, was able to draw a snicker from the fox, breaking the seal of solemnness that had enveloped the situation. “Might as well be our town motto.” Gregg pulled himself up far enough to place a kiss on his boyfriend’s lips, which drew a smile from each of them. Taking that as encouragement, the fox shifted his body so that he was straddling the bear, knees placed beside his hips and elbows above Agnus’ head. His partner watched, amused, as Gregg leaned in for another, deeper and more passionate kiss. Each of them threw themselves into the action, allowing the doubts plaguing their thoughts to melt away as their tongues met desperately. The fox pulled away first, a devious smirk gracing his face and replacing the distraught expression from minutes before. “This town may be shitty, but at least it’s got you.”

“You are a walking teen romance novel,” Angus teased, and Gregg couldn’t help but laugh. “So cliché,” he insisted.

“Guilty as charged.” The fox nuzzled into the crook of his boyfriend’s neck. “So, seeing how we’re both awake…” Gregg leaned up to whisper into the bear’s ear. “Do you wanna…?”

The smaller mammal pulled back to gauge the other’s reaction. He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, and Angus was left once again in amazement as his brain recoupled with the emotional gymnastics his partner was putting him though. Gregg had rapidly shifted from laying out all the fears infecting his mind to putting the moves on him; the bear was certain that such a drastic change would exhaust most people.

Fortunately for Gregg, Angus was not most people.

“…Yeah.”

* * *

Halfway across town, Beatrice Santello had the opposite problem, as she returned home to something a bit short of being showered with affection.

“I’m back.” The words echoed throughout the apartment, filling the space with something other than the sound of constant sports channel blaring from the television set. The crocodile tossed her keys unceremoniously atop the kitchen counter, further betraying her arrival with the jingle of the metal chain.

If her father heard her, or even cared, Bea had no idea. He made no move to get up from the couch, which kept him just out of his daughter’s line of sight. “I can make you some dinner, if you want.” Even without a reply, Bea moved into the kitchen. “I already ate, so it’ll just be whatever I can whip up, alright?”

Searching through the cabinets, Bea found less ingredients than she’d hoped for. Even as the master of the culinary arts that she was, she could hardly find something of subsistence to make from a half-box of oatmeal, some canned green beans, shake-and-bake, and baking soda. _Guess there’s a trip to Ham Panther in the near future,_ Bea conceded unwillingly. She could probably go after she closed the store tomorrow, the crocodile decided, even after she found the small portion of mac and cheese stashed away on the upper shelf.

 _It’s probably from when Mae came over for dinner._ Bea realized as she began boiling two pots of water: one for the greens and another for the noodles. She quickly ignored the idea, pushing away any memory of that night and their ensuing fight. “Mac and cheese with green beans sound good?” Bea tried to confirm her selection with her father, but wasn’t surprised when still no reply came from him. He had probably drunken too much and passed out on the couch, if his unresponsiveness was any indication. _Whatever._ It wasn’t her liver he was destroying.

The water boiled and the crocodile added the foods into each of their respective pots. She stirred them absentmindedly as her mind trailed off, doing as it usually did while she cooked. Typically, her worries concerning the store would’ve been all that concerned her thoughts, yet after the last few days, Beatrice’s mind had a bit more to mull over.

 _This week had been a blur._ It seemed like everything had gone to shit after Harfest: there had been ghost hunting, that disastrous college party, and then their night out in the woods, which had led to Mae’s injury, and… well, the rest of it. A cult. The cat’s confession. Living sacrifices. A demon in the hole in the mines. It was a lot to process, even without the hot steam rising into her face.

 _It doesn’t feel real._ It seemed like a dream more than anything else; the past three days had felt like such a radical departure from the regular monotony of her life that the crocodile wasn’t entirely sure they’d occurred at all. From the moment she’d first laid eyes on those cloaked figures out by the mines, she began to question just when she’d shifted from her reality to this new one; from tedious day-to-day life to a never-ending nightmare.

_Suddenly an uneventful day at the Ol’ Pickaxe doesn’t sound so bad, huh?_

The loud cheering from the living room TV called the crocodile back to the world of the living, where she quickly realized she was about to overcook the pasta. Straining the excess water from the container, she placed the noodles back into the pot and added the artery-clogging artificial cheese. Ducking down into the fridge, she went to search for some milk when she realized something else entirely.

 _Dad didn’t eat his pancakes._ The breakfast Bea had so kindly prepared for the other sat untouched on the top shelf of the refrigerator; she supposed she should be annoyed, but she honestly couldn’t give a damn. If he wanted to swap a delicious breakfast with a bottle of brandy, that was on him.

With the mac and cheese complete, Bea turned her attention to the vegetables before plating the two of them. It wasn’t much, but it was all the croc could manage with the little food they had. “Dinner’s ready if you want it.” She slid the plate and a fork over to the kitchen counter they typically ate at. Then, Bea stood in silence, eyes trained towards the couch in order to detect the smallest trace of movement. She wasn’t surprised when her father didn’t so much as stand up.

 _Whatever_. She breathed a small sigh of disappointment. _Hard work goes unnoticed once again._ Bea stashed the dinner away in the fridge, right next to his breakfast. He’d eat it tomorrow, even if Bea had to make him. They couldn’t afford to waste food like that when they were living month to month on the profits from the Ol’ Pickaxe as they were.

“I’m gonna take a shower,” she declared. Earlier, she’d unloaded a shipment of winter supplies, and the extra effort had left her feeling disgustingly sweaty. Even if she hadn’t officially opened the store’s doors to the public that morning, there had still been plenty of work in the backroom for her to catch up on. Taking stock and reorganizing everything for the quickly encroaching winter months took more time than one would expect. “Dinner’s in the fridge.”

Without so much as another word or moment wasted, the crocodile made her way over to her room. Passing by the couch, which sat, illuminated by the glow of the TV set, dark blue reptilian irises made sure to avoid so much as a passing glance towards her father’s favorite space, which had been left unoccupied for two days now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello NITW lovers! Thanks for reading the first chapter of TKoPS. I haven't posted anything in over a year now, so it probably won't surprise anybody that I've jumped onto another fandom.
> 
> That being said, I am extremely excited for this story, and it's not just because I've got another burst of inspiration that will slowly fizzle out after the first few chapters. For the first time ever, I've actually planned out and outlined the entire fanfic, from beginning to end! I've got a 42 page outline, with over 20,000 words, describing the character arcs and chapter plots for the entire story: a prologue, fifteen chapters, and an epilogue!
> 
> Whenever I wrote before, I had a very vague idea of what would happen; I knew I wanted to get the readers from point A to point B, but I would have absolutely no idea how to get there. Now, I know exactly what will happen in each chapter, and it is wonderful to know I won't get stuck trying the figure out what goes into each one.
> 
> The actual plot of the story will kick off at the end of the next chapter, so I hope you stay tuned. Hopefully, with the story all plotted out, it shouldn't take too long for me to update! Don't be afraid to comment, either! I appreciate hearing feedback, positive or negative, and I try to reply to everybody. I, like so many other writers, really appreciate every bit of response I receive. So thank you all!


	2. The Reports

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two days after their descent into the mines, Mae's friends find themselves in a familiar position: Bea's back to slaving away at the Ol' Pickaxe, and Gregg has resumed lording over the Snack Falcon. It's business as usual, except for the collection of missing person posters which has begun to paint the town. Stuck in a maze of denial and grief, the group must begin dealing with the fallout of their actions-including the one consequence none of them had foreseen.

_Wednesday, November 8 th_

Not for the first time, Beatrice Santello awoke from a long night’s rest feeling exhausted.

As the alarm blared from her bedside, a scaly hand reached out to bash the snooze button, the crocodile hardly stirring from beneath the covers. Following a series of numerous failed attempts, her fingers connected with the loud device, and the prize for her efforts was the ensuing silence. Gathering herself together, Bea tried to conjure up the energy for another day.

The reptile groaned aloud, before managing to prop herself up in bed. _6:00 am._ She would get down to the store by 7, do a bit of work in the back and then open its doors to the public for 8. Then she’d stand behind the counter and count the hours down until 6:30. Just like every other Wednesday of her life. It was funny that despite how dramatic their adventures with Mae seemed to be, they changed relatively little about her way of life.

 _Well…_ that wasn’t entirely true, but Bea refused to admit that to herself.

After her daily quick rinse and another change of clothes, Bea collapsed back on her bed, taking a moment of rest amid her morning routine. _6:23._ Out of habit, she found herself counting down the hours before her day even properly began: _12 hours and 7 minutes._ After work, she could drive over to Ham Panther to restock on groceries. And then… then she’d be back home. Alone, with the sound of sports announcers in the background and a growing refusal to admit what was becoming obvious.

Suddenly the idea didn’t seem so appealing.

Long days at the Pickaxe were just the distraction Bea needed now, but even then, the incessant hours would eventually relent as she closed shop in the evening. Of course, she would still do repairs and house calls afterhours–now more than ever, since she’d noticed a few conspicuous absences from her workers the day before. (That included Creek, which was both a blessing and a curse, as the crocodile no longer had to fear being in the same room as the freak yet at the same time had lost her best repairman.)

Despite that, her responsibilities for the day would still leave her at home for much of the night. And while before, Bea would embrace the opportunity to binge television on her laptop, now the possibility didn’t seem to appeal to her.

Pulling out said laptop, the crocodile signed in for her morning ritual: a quick message to Mae, usually sarcastic and written by her twelve brain cells which had managed to wake up.

> _Back to the Pickaxe. I’ll let you figure out what that means._

Sighing, Bea pushed herself off her bed, ready to finish preparing for a day at work. Yet with the thought of her furry friend came an idea that the pair had shelved about a week before, prior to their whole ghost-hunting shenanigans. Typically, the reptile was content to let the cat come up with plans for when they hung out, but her desperation for a diversion from her home life of any kind drove her to do the unthinkable: in uncharacteristic spontaneity, the crocodile’s fingers danced across the keyboard, typing out another message.

> _You still up for a round of putt-putt by Hunwick? Obviously, I’ll pay, since you’re broke._

Mae would see the messages first thing when she woke up. Which, judging from the cat’s typical sleep schedule, could be anytime between 10 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. Bea would be at the Pickaxe by then, far away from her laptop or wi-fi. Not that it mattered much. She could just confirm with Mae when she swung by.

* * *

By 10 am at the Snack Falcon, there was no doubt in Greggory Lee’s mind that he was having a bad day.

Work-wise, he had never been more productive; in the first three hours of his shift, the fox had already refilled the snack aisle, stocked the coolers with drinks, and emptied the trash into the dumpster out back. Yet his efficiency was a double-edged sword: as he pushed through the monotonous tasks, Gregg found himself with little left to entertain him.

 _Why doesn’t anyone in this town buy anything?!_ The fox complained desperately. The time between the breakfast rush and lunchtime surge seemed to bring no customers into the store. And after, Gregg was lucky to make more than a few sales. Usually, the mammal was content to go hours without a purchase, giving him all the time in the world to space out. Now, it was for that exact reason that he beseeched the world for a distraction. The fox rapped his fingers anxiously against the store counter, bruising his digits through the senseless, repetitive motion as he tried anything to prevent his mind from thinking freely. _Mae will come in soon_. A few hours, at the most. Gregg’s eyes swung nervously to examine the clock, seemingly finding the two hands exactly where they had been the last dozen times the fox had checked. He and the feline would probably go smash some lightbulbs out back; the adrenaline rush from the threat of thousands of tiny glass shards flying across his face would be enough to get him through the day without his mind straying back to it.

_Edison Adams._

Gregg cursed internally as his brain slipped back to the name–to the face, and the two bold words printed above his picture on the poster outside: _Missing Person._

 _Don’t think about it._ Gregg tried to curve his thought process towards anything other than _that_ , but it was already too late. _Then stop thinking about it!_ His fingers kept tapping until one struck out hard against the edge of the countertop, and the fox winced back in pain. It didn’t help, because as soon as Gregg closed his eyes, he could see the flyer painted across the back of his eyelids.

> _Missing Person: Edison Adams_
> 
> _42-year-old, light gray rat and life-long resident of Possum Springs. Adams is an upstanding pillar of his community who has worked construction for the past 16 years. He undertook numerous relief efforts following the major flood and snowstorms of the last decade. He was last seen on November 4 th, heading home from Saltztown. If you have any information, or know the whereabouts of Mr. Adams, please contact Possum Springs’ local authorities._

Above the informative paragraph had been a picture, which Gregg had tried his best to ignore. Still, he found his eyes had gravitated towards it. It showed the man in question, with an orange hard hat and a construction vest. He wore sunglasses, and grinned through the untrimmed hairs on his snout as he spotted his surprise photo-taker. Perhaps a wife, or a daughter; he was old enough to have both.

 _Stop._ Gregg pleaded with his mind to quit meandering over the life of the missing townsperson. The fox knew what most people did not: he recognized those pesky extenuating circumstances which surrounded his disappearance, and knew that this “Edison Adams” likely wasn’t the innocent man the flyers made him out to be. He knew exactly where the “missing person” was–either in the form of a cold, lifeless body, or as a slowly-starving rat who only grew increasingly desperate with each passing day, trapped at the bottom of some mines–

_Stop._

The fox sighed, deflating into his hands as he pressed his forehead into a mat of orange fur. He had seen the poster on his way to work. When someone had taken the liberty to pin it outside on every other telephone post, it was quite hard to miss. There he was: the first cult member, unmasked. Now, it was only a matter of time before the rest of the town stirred to action, shaken by the realization that their loved ones weren’t the only people to have gone missing. The remainder of the missing person reports would be called in rapidly now, and the single flyer would quickly give rise to nearly a dozen; families still holding out hope and finding excuses for why their husbands and fathers hadn’t bothered to even call would now have a reason to reach for the phones themselves–except instead they’d be dialing three simple digits.

Gregg knew that by lunch, the posters would likely by multiplied fourfold, and Possum Springs’ telephone poles would be covered in a sea of black and white sheets. Casey’s poster in town center would be overcrowded by the reports of the old men who’d killed him, and Possum Springs would throw itself headfirst into a recovery effort to save the lives of murderers.

_Everything about this is wrong._

Not for the first time, Gregg’s thoughts revolved back and forth from guilt to anger. He hated how he couldn’t even make up his own mind about the subject. One minute, all he could see were the families shattered by the incident–widowed mothers and fatherless children, doomed to grow up just as poor as he had. The next, it was only cult members getting what they deserved: a swift and unpleasant burial down by the hole they’d worshipped: a taste of their own medicine, in a victory so bittersweet. He felt dirtied inside, but at the same time justified for leaving them there to die.

 _I hate this._ The fox tried to suppress the growing tumor of emotions threatening to overtake him. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to have a panic attack in the Snack Falcon or break something. Restlessly, his fingers continued their graceless tapping, even as the action began to hurt the fox’s knuckles. What he needed right now was Angus: the bear would assure him that what they did was right. Or at least Mae, for the distraction the cat could provide him.

What he got was as far from them both as he could possibly conceive.

“Yo, you alright there foxy?” Gregg jumped in surprise, but he recognized the husky voice of Steve Scriggins before his eyes landed on the criminal crocodile.

“Uh… yeah!” He lied emphatically, and Steve shrugged, either believing him or not caring. Gregg glanced down at the bag of pretzels in the other’s hands. Standing in front of the store counter, the crocodile seemed to be waiting for something. “Do you… want me to ring you up?”

“Hell no,” Scriggins snorted. “I need a pack of cigs.”

“Oh. Right.” Gregg shuffled behind the counter in search of the crocodile’s demands. His deal with Steve to let him snag whatever he wanted from the Snack Falcon for free was really starting to bite the fox in the ass. It had been too short-sighted on his part, his mind clouded by the awesome opportunity to nab one of the Food Donkey animatronics. But it resulted in forcing Gregg to create increasingly elaborate stories to explain the disappearance of stock to his manager, Christine. Like just yesterday, 3 missing bags of chips had apparently been snagged by the band of rats which lived beneath the dumpster out back. And sure, Gregg had actually eaten 2 of those, but Steve’s habit of running up the score and attracting additional attention was not helping his case.

“Here you go.” The fox slid a pack of cigarettes across the counter, not even bothering to punch the price into the register. Unwillingly, he resolved to tell Christine that their rodent tenants apparently had an affinity for smoking Malboro as well. Without any further niceties, the crocodile turned to make his way out the store, breakfast and smokes in hand and not a dollar taken out of his pocket. Yet a thought crossed the fox’s mind and led Gregg to open his mouth. “Hey Scriggins?”

“What’s up, fox?” The crocodile began to turn back towards Gregg, but his attention was instead caught by the row of Red Bull behind the glass door of a cooler.

Biting his lower lip, the mammal toiled away inside, trying to determine whether asking Steve about it was even worth the effort. Yet in the end, while the crocodile may not have been Gregg’s preferred company, he was a better distraction than nothing. “You… hear about Adams?”

“Who?” Scriggins had no reservations against helping himself to a can of the energy drink.

“Edison Adams? Construction worker? Gray rat with an unruly muzzle?” The fox gave the other a moment to think, before sighing in defeat. “Is this ringing _any_ bells?”

“…yeah.” The crocodile nodded, able to place the name after a bit of mental searching. “My brother’s crew and I worked with his on a few projects. Why’d you ask?”

“He’s missing.” Gregg tried to gauge the other’s reactions, even as the fox himself pretended to know less about the situation than he actually did. “You didn’t see any of the posters around town?”

“Well damn. I guess I didn’t.” If Steve was particularly moved by the news, he didn’t show it. He opened his Red Bull casually, gulping back a good portion of the drink. “People sure as shit love to go missing in this town, huh?”

Gregg’s heart panged inwardly at the unspoken allusion: intentionally or not, Scriggins’ words sent the fox’s mind spiraling back toward a certain missing cat, whose disappearance no longer remained much of a mystery. Finding the conversation complete, the crocodile turned to leave once more. Yet the fox rushed to open his mouth, hurling away any thought of his ill-fortuned friend as another question rushed out, awkwardly fumbling from his mouth.

“How was he?”

“What?” Steve paused once more, annoyed by the other’s unwillingness to let him depart in peace. “Do you mean if he was sick or some shit?”

“I mean, like… what was he like?” The words felt odd and unwieldy, even to the fox, as he cautiously skated around the actual question.

“You’re trying to ask me if I think he got what was coming to him?” Steve translated, finding the words that Gregg wanted to say but couldn’t. Unable to swallow the newly formed lump in his throat, the mammal nodded as confirmation. That was just what he needed to hear: that Adams really did deserve such a fate. The fox hoped the rat was little more than a prick rather than a “pillar of the community.” That the consequences of his disappearance would be minimal, or even beneficial to those whose lives he’d impeded. That he was a feral rodent, undistinguished from those which bred unchecked in the alleys and dumpsters of Possum Springs.

After all–he had been a cult member who’d willingly murdered children and drifters. Gregg so desperately needed to hear that such an evil had carried over into each aspect of Adams’ life, rendering him to be little more than a burden to society who could be removed with no protest from anyone.

Yet as Steve shook his head, it became painfully clear that the crocodile had a different story to tell.

“…Nah.” Scriggins snorted, as if the idea was more amusing than anything else. “I mean, I didn’t know him that well, but he seemed like a pretty stand-up guy to me. His wife sometimes brought him lunch during breaks, and his whole crew loved to give him a load of shit for that, but he never did anything that made me think he was anything less of a hard-working dude. Just a family man trying to provide for his kiddos and all that shit.” The fox’s heart lurched in his chest. “And I say that knowing fully well that I’m a scumbag.” The crocodile drowned his laugh by chugging the rest of the Red Bull. “Nah… that dude was one of the good ones. The rest of the crew thought he was a real hoot, too. It’s a shame.”

He tossed his empty aluminum can into the trash on his way out of the store. The cheery bell that sounded as the door pushed open was a stark contrast to the dark pall casting over Gregg’s emotions. Scriggins himself turned back to face the fox, smirking with an expression somewhere between pity and shame. “But that’s just the way it goes, right? I mean… the good ones always seem to get the short end of the stick. At least we’re the ones that get to stick around.”

* * *

At 6:37 in the afternoon, scaly blue fingers turned the Ol’ Pickaxe’s open sign to closed.

Its lights went out with the flip of a switch. Once outside, in the brisk autumn air, beneath the setting sun of a late fall evening, the store’s de facto manager locked the door behind her. Only with the audible click of the inner mechanism did the burden of the day’s work disappear, and Bea sighed reflexively.

As far as business at a local hardware store went, it had been a relatively busy day: most people needed to stock up on supplies for the impending winter season, and a handful had even scheduled repairs for the next week. Of course, busy was good, but problems arose when for the second day in a row, two of her workers had failed to show up.

 _Cooper and Creek._ Either they’d both caught a sudden case of the flu or they were down there in those mines. Knowing the latter’s loose moral standards, Bea wasn’t too resistant to the second idea. Still, their disappearances would put a lot of stress on the store in the coming months, especially since the pair were over half their repairmen.

 _Whatever._ Bea could double up on repairs and sales if she had to. It would give her plenty of reason not to be home and even save a lot of money that had been used on paying her employees. _Who cares if I have to work 100 hours a week?_

Instinctually, the crocodile leaned up against the front of the Pickaxe and searched her pockets for her cigarettes. She pulled the box and her light blue lighter out from the dress, eager to light up for the first time since lunch.

 _Shit. Last one._ Usually, a pack was able to get her through a week or two, but the crocodile distinctly remembered picking up a box only a few days prior over at Ham Panther. The whole cult ordeal and being forced to hide at Angus’ apartment may have taken its toll on Bea’s cigarette rations. Resigning herself to another ten-dollar purchase, the crocodile lit her drug of choice. _Guess I’ll pick some more up before putt-putt._

Which reminded Bea–she never had heard back from Mae. She slowly breathed out a steady stream of cigarette smoke, relaxing under the familiarity of the act. By itself, the cat’s failure to swing by the Pickaxe wasn’t surprising, considering that she had a habit of getting distracted and an unparalleled talent for forgetting stuff, but Bea had at least expected an answer by the time she got off her shift. _Whatever. She’d probably just doing stuff with Gregg._

…Or Mae could’ve responded via laptop, not realizing the obvious problem there. Given that Bea’s laptop was at home, the exact place she hoped to avoid.

 _I’ll just go swing by the Snack Falcon._ The fox’s shift officially should’ve ended at about the same time as her own, but knowing whether Gregg had decided to actually follow his schedule for the day was an impossible task. _That way I can see if they made plans and get another pack, too._

Quickly, Bea smoked through the rest of her cigarette and snuffed the stub out against the brick wall of the Pickaxe, as if the minor slight could make up for the hours she had sunk into her dead-end job running a small-town hardware store. Pushing off from the wall, the crocodile began the walk across the Possum Springs downtown.

Past the memorial statue, and beyond the Party Barn, she roamed. The chilly air and passing cars were all that seemed to accompany her on her trek through the quiet rural community. Although, it wasn’t long before the posters caught her attention as well.

They were everywhere: spilling off of the empty spaces between the buildings, wherever they could reasonably be found. The words “missing person” wrapped around telephone poles, warping the photos and their descriptions at awkward angles. Like falling leaves, loose sheets tumbled across the sidewalk, tugged away from their sloppily positioned posts by an unforgiving gust of wind.

 _And so it begins._ The sudden and overwhelming urge for another dose of tobacco and nicotine seized the crocodile. She’d managed to avoid any mention of the reports as of yet, thanks to her obliviousness while trapped at work, but nearly half a dozen different designs now decorated the walls of Possum Springs. At a distance, they looked innocent and unassuming, like flyers for a community event, yet up close, one could read the desperate calls for aid, see the panic and desperation seeping through the writer’s voice in broken punctuation. Bea recognized some of the names and faces easily enough: Mr. Daminco, Cathy from high school’s father; Edison Adams, one of the Pickaxe’s regulars and a friend of her dad’s; and of course, Cooper and Creek the Creep. The rest were unfamiliar.

She resisted the morbid curiosity that called her in, beckoning for her to read the posters and their vivid recollections of their victims’ appearance and final whereabouts. Bea was smart enough to know that those descriptions would only leave her feeling like a vaguely shitty person, who’d allowed those six and more to remain trapped, sealed away from the world by a cave-in which she and her friends had ultimately caused. The crocodile knew better than to let that guilt settle inside her.

Yet the truth was undeniable. The town was beginning to feel the effects from their actions. Whether it was from anxious employers or troubled families, missing person reports were being filed, and the sleepy Possum Springs police were probably swept up in a wave of calls the likes of which they’d never seen. An investigation would soon begin, and then there was no telling what they might uncover.

 _Well, what else did you expect?_ After nearly a dozen people go missing, it’s only a matter of time before someone says something. Not everyone was capable of masquerading this reality as something other than what it was. Not everyone was comfortable living their lives in denial.

Bea shook her head, waving away the unwelcomed thoughts. She instead focused her attention on the approaching Snack Falcon, and her eyes landed on a sight as equally unusual as her hometown covered with missing person reports.

“What the hell are you doing?” Bea felt the words tumble forth, with equal parts confusion and anger. The target of her baffled rage was none other than Greggory Lee, standing shakily with a cigarette awkwardly positioned in his unpracticed hand. The crocodile’s outburst apparently startled the fox, who jumped back before recognizing his scaly friend. “You don’t smoke.”

“I can start, can’t I?” Gregg’s response was brusque and undignified, even as he brought the stick to his lips and took a drag. Unaccustomed with the sensation, the fox choked on the smoke, sputtering into a coughing fit.

“No, you obviously can’t.” The concern that Bea felt was immediate, despite the hypocrisy of her own habits. _There’s only room for one chain smoker in our group of friends._ Seeing someone else in their circle pick up on the admittedly unhealthy tradition felt… wrong. “Put it out.”

“…Seriously?” Gregg raised his eyebrow questioningly at the crocodile, not entirely confident that she wasn’t kidding, but Bea stood unwavering in her convictions. With a sigh, he dropped the cigarette to the ground and squashed it beneath his shoe, grinding ash into the sidewalk. “Fine, better?”

“What the hell are you doing?” She repeated the original question, and Bea had to admit she didn’t feel much better at all. If Gregg wanted to, he could easily light up another cigarette the moment after she left.

“Smoking!” he replied bitterly. “Or at least, I was.”

“Why the hell would you do that?” As far as Bea knew, the fox has never before smoked a day in his life. But the more she thought about it, the less she actually knew about Gregg, and the less sure she was that was true…

“I need something to deal with _that,_ don’t I?” Bea’s head turned to follow the other’s outstretched hand. The fox directed her attention towards a nearby telephone pole, covered in the same web of flyers that Bea herself had seen on the walk over. _Oh._ The missing persons. _Right._ The desperation oozing out from Gregg’s voice made a lot more sense now, in the context of their situation. “Or is that not okay?” He sarcastically added.

“It’s not!” the crocodile rebutted. She knew she must have sounded nonsensical, especially since she herself had sought out the Snack Falcon specifically for the reason of securing another pack, but there was a difference between Gregg and Bea–one which extended beyond the simple truth that Bea was addicted–and she had no real desire for the fox to feel that same daily straining of his body under the pressures of addiction.

“Why? You smoke! Why can’t I?”

“Because you’ve got people that care about you, you dick,” Bea spat the words out venomously. “Could you imagine how upset Angus would be if he saw you like this?”

That was exactly what the crocodile needed to strike a chord. The guilt over missing townspeople that Gregg was trying so hard to cover up with cigarettes and nicotine paled in comparison to the realization that Bea was entirely right. The possibility of disappointing Angus felt very real indeed, and the internal tide of his emotions threatened to burst a damn at the mention of doing so, _again_ , when he’d already failed his boyfriend so much before.

“Shit…” The reality of the situation seemed to catch up to Gregg.

“Yeah, shit is right.” Bea watched with a mixture of relief and pity, as a cycle of doubt, fear and realization overcame the fox. “Just… give me the rest of your pack and I promise I won’t tell Angus about anything.”

“…Really?” Gregg eyed the other skeptically: as far as his relationship with Bea went, they were pretty good… acquaintances? Friends of friends, who only hung out as a group thing. The idea that the crocodile would actually hide something like this from Angus, a much closer friend of hers, surprised the fox.

“Yeah.” Bea felt a twinge of guilt at the idea, but ultimately decided it was best if the bear didn’t know about his boyfriend’s misadventure; Gregg was foolish and impressionable, and he’d latched onto the first thing which he thought might help distract him from the grim reality they were currently stuck inside. And Bea had been, too, at a time. After all, she’d only began smoking when her mother had gotten sick. Only then, nobody had cared to stop her. “Just… as long as you never do this shit again.”

“…Deal.” Gregg fished the box out from his leather jacket and handed them over to the crocodile, suddenly eager to dispose of any evidence from his folly. “The smoke sorta tastes like shit anyway.”

“Thanks.” Bea accepted the gift graciously, ignoring the slight towards her own addiction. They both knew that she wouldn’t be disposing of the cancer sticks in any trashcan.

“…I still smell like smoke, don’t I?” The fox asked nervously.

“Oh definitely.” Bea didn’t bat an eye at the question: one of the most notable effects of smoking was its residual odor. “But there’s not much that can help you with that besides a shower and a clean set of clothes.” Before Gregg could start to panic, the crocodile gave him an easy out. “If Angus asks, just tell him… I hugged you or some shit. I dunno.”

“You want me to tell Angus that we had some sort of heart-to-heart conversation?” Gregg nearly chuckled at the absurdity of the idea.

“I mean, sure.” Bea shrugged. “This is sorta that, I guess.”

“…Huh.” Thinking about it for a moment, the fox couldn’t help but agree with the crocodile. The two of them rarely talked on their own, and even then, it would never be an extended discussion such as this one. ‘Well. Thanks, then. For this heart-to-heart.”

“No problem.” For a minute the pair just stood there, as if each of them wanted to find something else to say but didn’t have the words for it. Breaking away from their back and forth, the duo noticed the sunset in the distance, a telltale sign that the night had almost caught up to them. “…Guess I should get going then.”

“…Alright.” The end to their conversation was about as awkward as one would expect. “I gotta stay here. Lock up the Snack Falcon and stuff.”

“Cool.” Another moment of hesitation, and Bea began to shuffle off, back in the direction of the Pickaxe and her home. She threw a glance backwards toward the fox, whose attention still seemed stuck to the posters on the telephone pole, and suddenly the second reason for her visit returned to Bea. “Hey–uh… are you and Mae doing anything tonight?”

“What?” Gregg snapped back to reality and faced the crocodile. It took him a moment to replay her question in his mind, but he then shook his head in response. “Oh. No.” He paused another second. “I… actually haven’t seen Mae all day. She didn’t stop by the Snack Falcon like usual.”

“Oh. Gotcha.” Bea couldn’t suppress the sudden vein of worried thoughts which sprouted from her mind. “Guess I’ll see ya later then. Band practice and all that.”

“Yep.” The fidgety fox gave her a weak smile and wave. “See ya.”

 _I don’t think Mae’s been in town all day._ Bea concluded, turning her back towards the Snack Falcon and making her return homewards. _That’s… concerning._

Her brain stuttered for a moment, searching back to her conversation with the cat the previous day, for anything that might explain Mae’s inactivity. Her mind immediately picked out what had been the main source of the cat’s worries.

 _Oh, right._ She was gonna to talk to her parents about… well, _everything_. Candy and Stan wanted to know why their daughter had suddenly dropped out of college her sophomore year. And in order to explain that, the cat would have to relive her worst memories in vivid detail: Andy Cullen and her dissociative episodes. The last time she had done that had been on the couch in Angus and Gregg’s apartment. And just after, she snuck off in order to face the cult on her own.

 _Hopefully, she didn’t do anything that stupid this time._ On the plus side, the mines were _definitely_ sealed, thanks to one dynamite-possessing Germ, so Mae couldn’t go back down there even if she tried. However, even in a small town like Possum Springs, there was no shortage of idiotic stuff the cat could do. Many of which could put her out of commission and explain the lack of her appearance across town.

However, not all the possible explanations hinged on Mae making stupid choices (most of them, however, did). _Maybe her parents finally took her to see an actual therapist._ Someone better than Dr. Hank, Bea would hope. _Maybe someone who actually has a license to practice real therapy._

Or, alternatively, yesterday’s conversation had sent her spiraling into another episode.

 _Let’s… try not the think about that happening._ Bea decided, shuddering. Objectively, Mae was a handful as she was when she was sane. The crocodile was honestly unsure if she would know how to deal with her had she slipped into another one of her shape-seeing states.

 _I could just swing by her house. Check to make sure she’s alright._ Bea’s apartment came into view as the crocodile cautiously descended down the Maple Street hill. For a brief moment, the reptile was swept up in the revelation that the she hadn’t actually been to the Borowski residence since the start of 7th grade–although that wasn’t entirely true, as her brain quickly corrected, since she had needed to escort the cat inside after she’d gotten piss-drunk at the party nearly two weeks before. The difference there was that once upon a time, she had used to come over and hang out, having dinners and sleepovers with the Mae and her family, rather than simply guiding the drunken feline to her bed.

 _Does the house even look the same?_ She hadn’t had too much of an opportunity to admire the interior that night. On her way inside, she had been too occupied with Mae, balancing feelings of frustration and disgust while quite literally forcing the wobbly mammal upstairs; on her way out, she was exhausted and too embarrassed to say more than a few passing words to the cat’s father, who’d been waiting up on the couch.

 _I wonder if they’ve still got that massive grandfather clock, and those hideous vintage wallpapers that look ripped straight from the 80’s._ Even as the thoughts piled inside Bea’s mind, her legs carried her past the front steps of her apartment without even contending the option of returning home. Somewhere between the crest of Maple hill and the 150 feet downhill to her building, the crocodile had made the unconscious decision to continue her march over towards the cat’s house, inviting herself over after her long hiatus, hoping to see the cat rather than just dropping the drunken feline off after a shitty night.

 _Just to make sure she’s okay,_ Bea justified. _Definitely not because I want to see if they’ve replaced the awful wallpaper._ If Mae was up to it, maybe they could still play that round of putt-putt. Grocery shopping could always wait–she’d left leftovers in the fridge for her dad, anyway. He could work a microwave. Or, if he was drunk past the point of anything resembling intelligence, he could dine finely on the taste of cold mac and cheese with green beans. For herself: Bea saw a round of mini golf and Hunwick soft serve in her future.

As it turned out, the crocodile was no clairvoyant, and the world had other plans in store for Beatrice Santello that night.

 _Is that Molly’s police car?_ A few houses down from Mae’s own, the she was able to spot the monochromatic vehicle. Given that her friend’s aunt was one of two cops in their town, it was probably a pretty safe bet that it was, especially since Molly had a habit of visiting the Borowski’s due to Mae’s proclivity for vaguely illegal activity.

 _Jesus Mae, what did you do now?_ In the six-year span after the cat had cast “Beabea” aside in favor of cooler friends like Gregg and Casey, Mae had gotten herself into a mixed bag of troubles: vandalism, petty theft, and trespassing were all pretty standard, but there were also those novel instances of higher crimes. Like attempting to burn down their high school and strangely enough, tax evasion. To be fair, that last one came simply from ignorance, during the one year when Mae tried a job as a cashier at the Food Donkey and not known she needed to disclose her income. But the record still showed that the cat with a criminal streak tended to have the ire of “Aunt Mall Cop” directed squarely at her.

Bea found herself standing at the front door where Mae had waved her goodnight one day before. A pit of dread had started to collect in her stomach: what would she see when she walked inside? A cat in handcuffs, with the possibility of actually serving time now that she was no longer a minor? A severe scolding, which amounted to little more than a slap on the wrist? A living room with the same ugly ass wallpaper? Or maybe Molly was just paying a nice family visit, completely unrelated to her niece’s illegal activities?

 _Okay that last one’s probably not the case._ Given the current state of things in Possum Springs, with half a dozen gone missing, the police would be absolutely swamped. There was no reason they’d spend valuable time on something completely unrelated to the events of– _oh shit._

 _They haven’t already found out… have they?_ The possibility of connecting Mae and her friends to the cave-in at the mines and the disappearances in under 24-hours would certainly be slim to none, and Bea hoped that those chances would stay the same, regardless of how long the police searched for clues. It wasn’t exactly like they could dig up hard evidence or dust for fingerprints.

 _Shit._ A chill ran down Bea’s spine, spreading across the coarse reptilian skin as anxiety flushed through the crocodile’s mind. The idea of heading home and calling this all off occurred to her, even as she realized that she had yet to make a move to knock on the door. She could leave, and Molly would be none the wiser. _However, if Mae’s in there being grilled…_ Bea wouldn’t forgive herself for ditching her friend amidst an interrogation. Especially since she herself would probably end up being questioned too. With a deep breath, the crocodile tried her best to steel herself, and rapped her knuckles against the entrance.

A minute passed, and the reptile felt her restless heart beat. The palpitations extended so far as to vibrate her throat, and Bea almost began to fear that if she opened her mouth, they would be just as audible. Again, she knocked, and again, there was no answer. Confusion swept over the crocodile, joining the ranks of anxiety and uncertainty. There had to be someone home, right? Stan’s car was parked right before the Molly’s, and as far as she knew, Candy walked to the church every day. _What’s going on in there?_

Pushing through her uneasiness and surrendering to the desperate impulse to know what was going on, Bea turned the doorknob. With a gentle push, she found the entrance unlocked, and slowly creeped her way into the front room of the cat’s family home.

It wasn’t the most important thing at the time, but it crossed Bea’s mind that this probably qualified as trespassing.

She heard them before she saw anyone; a series of unintelligible cries, followed by the steady counseling of another. Candy and Molly were seated at the kitchen table, across the first floor from the crocodile. As Mae’s mother sputtered out what sounded like little more than incoherent ramblings to the reptile, her sister dutifully attempted to comfort her. Before Bea could find the right words to announce her appearance, or plot a swift departure from the home, the door slammed shut behind, making the crocodile instinctively cringe.

Molly's head turned on a swivel to face the other. As Bea stood idly, unsure how the cop would respond to her sudden arrival, she received only a curt nod from the officer. Molly seemed unfazed by the crocodile’s surprise appearance, and turned her attention back towards Mae’s crying mother, but not before sliding a paper over from her side of the table to the side closest to Bea.

Intrigued, the crocodile approached carefully, not certain if the other’s actions were meant to beckon her over towards the table. _What’s… going on in here?_ The dread in her stomach solidified, and felt like a boulder weighing down the reptile’s insides. Her steps towards the kitchen were hesitant and small, but the progress she made only built with time, until those words decorating the paper were fully legible.

“Bea.” A single word–her name–came softly from the police officer’s lips, even as dark blue reptilian eyes jumped across the single printed flyer, unable to accept the simple truth it portrayed. _No… that’s got to be wrong._ Bea read the lines of formal print over and over again, as if that might change their meaning. Instead, the action only confirmed the grimness of their new situation. “I know this might be a bit much… but I need to ask you a few questions.” The lump inside the crocodile’s throat felt hard, even though she had predicted a police interrogation in her future. “I… presume that you understand why.” Bea nodded fiercely, struggling to fight with a new onslaught of emotions. _There must be some mistake._ There _had_ to be a mistake.

> _Missing Person: Mae Borowski_
> 
> _20-year-old Mae (Margaret) Borowski was last seen leaving the Clik Clak with friends the evening of November 7 th. It is unknown whether she returned home, but her attic bedroom was found torn apart the following morning. She is a cat with dark blue fur and a tuft of dyed red hair. 5’2” and typically wears an orange “null” symbol shirt. Due to radical shifts in demographic, it is unknown whether her disappearance is linked to the most recent missing person cases of Possum Springs. If you have any information at all, or know the whereabouts of Ms. Borowski, please contact Possum Springs’ local authorities…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, the summary for the story might be a bit misleading.
> 
> This fic's about Mae going missing! Or well, most of it is. Following the events of Night in the Woods, the main cast (minus Mae) will attempt to find out what happened to the cat over the next dozen or so chapters. Each character also has their individual plot arcs, which I hope will all work together nicely.
> 
> I'm really grateful for everybody who's read and responded, and left kudos on the story so far! I know it's not much yet, but I'm hoping for this story to really come out well. Every little bit of feedback is good encouragement for me to keep writing, so I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!


	3. The Search

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the wake of the cult's disappearance, an unexpected addition has joined the reports of missing persons across Possum Springs: Mae Borowski. Across the town, the news reached the cat's friends in all different sorts of ways, but they only have minimal time to accept the surprise development before search parties set out for a night in the woods.

It was all broken.

From the posters that layered the walls to the futon which the cat slept on, the attic room had been destroyed beyond any inkling of doubt that this was simply the typical, disheveled habitat of Margaret Borowski.

Her standing mirror lay shattered across the ground, spilling glittery glass shards across the planked wood floor and encouraging the crocodile to exercise caution where she walked. Mae’s bed, usually pressed up against the window, had been flipped and its wooden flame lay splintered, the sharp timber spikes threatening to pierce any distracted passerby; her clothes and old books, usually kept at least semi-orderly in cardboard boxes which filled the far side of the attic, had instead been emptied into arbitrary piles. Seemingly without abandon, the confines of the cat’s room had been ravaged by a mysterious force, leaving in its wake a ruinous tale of disaster.

A shiver ran down the crocodile’s spine, and it was safe for Bea to say that it wasn’t just because of the gust of chilly fall air that rushed in through the open window.

 _Holy shit…_ her breath hitched in the back of her throat, catching on the shock of the situation she had so unexpectedly found herself in. Scaly fingers reached out to press the remains of Mae’s Witchdagger poster back onto the wall, pinning the lower half back in place with the gentle guidance of her fingers. The picture had seemingly been sliced in half, cut and slashed indiscriminately by sharp claws. Dejectedly, Bea let its bottom side droop back down, hanging to its original perch by a few lonely pieces of tape. She continued her observation of the scene in a scatterbrained daze, unable to fully understand how her world had come to this.

 _Mae’s gone._ The situation, as well as what remained of the cat’s room, seemed like an all-too-real horror story for the crocodile: a reality so cruel that it could not exist outside her nightmares. The unfortunate truth was that those nightmares were starting to become pretty commonplace in Bea’ life.

“Bea.” The patient and sympathetic voice of the officer beside her did its best to drag her back from the internal workings of her mind. A gentle touch of a paw on her shoulder reminded Bea that she was not alone, because beside her stood her best friend’s aunt and resident police officer of Possum Springs. Blue reptilian eyes shifted to face Molly, finding themselves lost and confused in the wake of the determined expression the feline wore. “I know this is a lot to take in, but it’s essential to react quickly to a disappearance of this kind.” Nodding along, the crocodile found herself unable to really process any of the words the cat said to her. All Bea could comprehend was the urgency of the situation, which required no discussion. “I need to ask you a few questions.”

 _I need a smoke._ The crocodile’s mind helpfully supplied, forcing herself to ignore the familiar craving for nicotine and tobacco. The weight of the new box she’d just pawned off of Gregg made its presence well-known to Bea, who suddenly debated if lighting up in the middle of the crime scene for a possible kidnapping was considered poor etiquette.

_A kidnapping._

_Jesus Christ, Mae could’ve been kidnapped._ Thinking it made the situation feel even more drastic, even if that had always been the most likely scenario. The pair were standing amidst the cat’s ransacked room, where every object sent upturned or broken. It was quite obvious that Mae hadn’t just up and left, disappearing willingly into the night.

“When was the last time you saw her, Bea?” Molly began the interrogation with a notepad and pencil poised in hands, expecting an answer from the crocodile that she might add to her notes for the case. Instead, Bea found her head an unnavigable clutter.

 “I don’t remember…” Bea’s voice trailed off, her reply unhelpful at best and much more likely a waste of the officer’s time. Truthfully, she understood the importance of helping Molly now, of answering her questions as specifically and detailed as possible, yet her mind was a jumbled mess. On the spur of the moment, the crocodile had almost said that she hadn’t seen Mae since the cat first left for college those two years ago. Which was plainly _wrong_ , if the recent resurfacing of the feline in Bea’s life was any indication.

 _This doesn’t make any sense._ Bea racked her brain for any semblance of reason in their circumstances, yet her mind threatened to collapse in its own empty cavern. _We sealed the mines. The cult is gone._ She could personally attest to that, not only because the unintended cave-in had nearly trapped Bea and her friends, but because of the numerous missing person posters which now bespeckled the town. _There’s no reason for Mae to go missing._

 _Yeah, well, obviously there is, otherwise you wouldn’t exactly be here right now, would you?_ Bea’s soured mind spat back spitefully. She had prepared for today to be fun: simple and easy, maybe a bit exhausting for the crocodile given her work schedule, but still a nice day out in Hunwick playing mini golf, eating ice-cream, and pretending that their lives were normal.

There seemed to be no chance for that anymore.

“Perhaps it’s best if we talk somewhere else,” Molly decided, seeing the affect the wreckage had on the crocodile, “Come on.” The cat’s gentle but firm grip on Bea’s scaly shoulder led her out from the attic, bringing her towards the upstairs door and the flight of stairs downwards. The crocodile’s steps were small and hesitant, as if the reptile was unwilling to part with the terrifying scene which presumably was the last known location of her friend. However, the attic door eventually creaked shut behind the pair, leaving them standing freely on the Borowski’s second floor landing.

Finally away from the destruction, Bea’s mind began to return to her, tuning back into the world around her. Like a dense cloud of stuffing in her brain had been drained instantaneously, the crocodile focused in on the officer before her–and perhaps Mae’s best hope for being found.

With Bea’s attention reclaimed, Molly slackened her lead on the crocodile, trusting her to follow her down the next flight of steps. Onto the first floor, the feline officer continued her path outside the house through the front door; Bea herself couldn’t help but pause to look towards Candy Borowski, who now sat on her lonesome at the kitchen table.

The other cat appeared to be doing better now than when the crocodile had first entered the house: her sobbing had drawn to a close as the distraught mother now sat soundlessly, trapped in a longing gaze with the picture of her missing daughter used for the flyer. From what Bea had seen, the photo had apparently been taken before the cat had left for college: the tuft of dyed red fur on Mae’s head being noticeably brighter, resulting in a starker contrast on the black and white pictures, and the fur itself much shorter, the cat’s grooming habits apparently healthier when she had two older cats watching over her at home.

Little things like that were what had stuck out to the crocodile when she looked at the old photo: even just seeing it for a few moments, Bea had been able to pick up on seemingly trivial details which had slipped by her since the cat’s return–all of which now began to worry the reptile when considered in conjunction to the feline’s recent confessions. Changes in the cat’s facial mannerisms, like the way her eyes always seemed to be unfocused and spacey, unlike the hyperactive yet still attentive orbs present in the photograph. Or the weight that she put on, a testament to her binge eating habits at college.

Before Mae had left for school, she had been… well, a lot of things, admittedly: immature, over-energetic, unreceptive towards authority and stubborn, to name a few. When she came back, she still acted very much the same. And yet her attitude and demeanor underwent subtle fluctuations that the reptile had missed until she looked back on the past: Bea had once charged the cat for not changing despite the two years away from Possum Springs, but maybe she hadn’t been looking hard enough.

Now, the crocodile’s glance towards Mae’s mother was met with swollen red eyes, trained back at her. Pity swelled forth in the reptile’s chest, who could sympathize with the cat: while Bea’s friend had disappeared, she had also been Candy’s only daughter, vanishing under the safety of her own roof. Whatever emotions the crocodile thought she was feeling, the older cat likely experienced tenfold.

Bea tore her gaze away from the kitchen to follow the officer outside of the Borowski residence, embracing the cold autumn evening as a sort of freedom away from the stifling atmosphere of the house. The final tendrils of light were fading from the setting sky, and the crocodile realized that she’d only been inside Mae’s house for ten minutes at most. Somehow, a world where she’d been blissfully ignorant of her friend’s disappearance felt a whole lifetime away.

“Did you really find it like that?” Bea found the words tumbling forth without her even really meaning to say them. “Mae’s room, I mean.” The question was probably stupid, but the crocodile needed confirmation that what she’d seen really had been the result of a likely abduction. If there was any chance at all that there could be another explanation, Bea would gladly risk sounding like a dumbass.

Yet unfortunately, Molly nodded: a clear affirmative. “Candy did. Right before she was supposed to head out for work.” The officer sighed at the mention of her sister, empathizing with her experience just as Bea did.

Under the faded autumn sun, the crocodile struggled to see the cop’s face. However, Bea could just make out the dark rings of exhaustion drooping beneath her eyes, and she soon realized just how Molly must have been feeling, too. The other’s patient voice had been cracking since the beginning of their conversation, struggling to cope with the surge of events from the past 24 hours. The reptile had no idea how long the officer had been working, likely starting in the early hours of morning when the first missing person report had been filed up through the next six, including her very own niece. Small town cops like Molly weren’t expecting to go into work only to find the largest investigation of their lives laid out before them; it certainly didn’t help that Possum Springs’ police force consisted only of herself and an old ferret nearing retirement.

“Mae was supposed to come home early yesterday,” Molly continued, and Bea noticed that her notepad was once again out and ready for use. In an unhelpful fashion, her brain quickly picked up on the similarities between the cop and her niece’s journaling habits. The mild amusement this brought about was suddenly dashed by the recognition that Molly was hoping to collect info essential to solving the investigation, while Mae’s journal composed of crude sketches of its owner’s thoughts. “There’s reports of her leaving the Clik Clak with you, Gregg and Angus not too long before then.”

Bea nodded, swallowing her nervousness back down her dry throat. “Yeah.” Molly’s expectant gaze told the crocodile she was gonna need a bit more than that. “I mean–yeah, we went to get some food after band practice. I gave Mae a ride home.” The cop scrawled some notes down hastily. “It was pretty early in the evening, but she wanted to get home early for dinner with her parents.”

“Uh huh.” Molly remarked uncommittedly, jotting down words hidden from the crocodile. Any tension Bea felt was only natural in a situation such as this one–if not worsened by the irrational fear that the conversation may shift to their activities in the mines at any moment. “So you dropped her off. Did you see her enter the house?”

“Yes–” Bea replied instinctively, before searching her mind for the exact moment. The mental image she had while driving away told a different story. “Actually, no. I left while she was on the front steps.” The cop wrote a short bullet, crossed it out, and replaced it to match the shift in the crocodile’s story. “I thought her parents were supposed to be home?”

Molly bit her lip hesitantly, as if that exact thought had already given her far too many headaches. “They were. But Candy went off to Ham Panther to pick up some groceries.”

“Oh. What about Stan?” Bea realized she hadn’t even _seen_ the other cat, despite the intensity of the situation.

“He was… preoccupied.” The ominous wording confused the reptile, but Molly quickly waved away that road of conversation. “It’s not really up for me to say.”

“So… neither of them was home when I dropped Mae off.” Bea clarified, dread already sneaking up on her as she realized what that implied.

“That’s correct.” Molly already understood what was slowly dawning on the reptile. “You dropped her off, her parents came home, waited all night for her return and only realized in the morning that her room had been destroyed and their daughter had disappeared.”

The dryness of her throat felt as if she had just smoked a dozen cigarettes. In reality, Bea was too occupied to light a single one. “So that would make me…”

“…The last person to have seen her,” the cop completed. A tingly sensation cast over the crocodile, and Bea worried she would be sick.

“Oh god.” Rows of reptilian teeth grinded against one another as Bea paced away from the officer, running her hands through the spikey scales of her head. Mae was gone and she’d been the last one to be with her. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been such a major point of contention for the crocodile, but the casualness of her conversation with the cat the day before belied the fact that no one had seen her since.

“Relax, Bea.” It was much easier for the cop to say rather than for the croc to do. “It’s not your fault. It just means you may be our best lead for where Mae might have gone.” If that was supposed to ease the reptile, it failed, as it only made her head swirl even faster inside. “I showed you her room so that you might understand what we’re dealing with.”

“What do you mean?” The crocodile asked weakly, struggling to see what Molly was leading to.

The officer paused momentarily, tapping her pencil to the notepad as she labored over the best way to form her next question. “Did anything seem… _off_ about Mae on your drive to drop her off?”

Molly’s tone alone gave Bea reason to pause. “…What?”

“I mean, was Mae acting strangely? Did she feel cornered by the fact that her parents wanted to talk to her about why she dropped out of college?” The crocodile suddenly dreaded where the cop might be headed. Nevertheless, the conclusion Molly had reached became painfully clear with her next question. “Perhaps a bit more _aggressive_ than usual?”

Bea’s heart dropped with a solid thud. _No._ No, Molly couldn’t be implying something like _that._ Any hope the reptile had held for the furry officer to take Mae’s disappearance seriously dissipated, scattering like an emptied vial of dust in the wind. “Are you trying to–”

Even before the crocodile could launch to her friend’s defense, Molly bore down on her own theory. “We both known that Mae has had certain episodes in the past, Bea.” The exhaustion of the feline was obvious, even in the face of the dismayed look the reptile had adopted. “While the timing hardly seems coincidental, given the other reports, we have to keep in mind that this _is_ Mae.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Any anger the crocodile felt towards the cat was thinly veiled by Bea’s own self-control.

“It means she was the only missing person to leave a scene like that behind,” Molly elaborated. In growing despair, Bea began to realize how the officer had reached her conclusion, invalid as it was: all the other missing persons disappeared suddenly, leaving no trace of their status behind. But Mae hadn’t been caught in the cave-in–or at least, hadn’t been permanently trapped by it. She had returned home, slept soundly for a night, and vanished sometime the next day, her disappearance marked by a clear path of destruction. “As well as the fact that the damage is clearly not part of a struggle.”

“Excuse me?” It seemed pretty damn clear to Bea that a significant “struggle” had occurred to ravage the Borowski’s attic so severely.

“It’s true,” Molly calmly asserted. “Every single item in Mae’s room was been touched: be it broken, flipped, dumped or thrown. Any type of fight is hardly that meticulous: clearly, a rageful individual was targeting whatever they could to take out their frustrations.”

“You’re wrong.” Bea shook her head confidently. “That wasn’t Mae.”

“Do you have another explanation?” The cat sighed tiredly. “Cause trust me, I am _all_ ears right now.”

“Someone else must have torn the room apart,” Bea guessed. “They were probably, like, searching for something. Or maybe just trying to send some sort of message.”

“And why would they do that?” The crocodile fell silent–partially because she had no answer, and partly because any reply she could otherwise give would potentially implicate her and her friends; fortunately, Molly could only assume the former. “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but it’s only a theory. Mae probably felt threatened and took the anger out on whatever was closest, leaving before anyone else got home.”

Bea shook her head silently, unwilling to accept such a weak explanation when there _must_ be a tie to their interactions with the cult and the other missing persons. “What about the other disappearances? You’re ready to accept the timing is just a coincidence?”

Another sigh. “Mae’s too far out of the demographic. Plus, she went missing at least a day after all the others.” Both facts were true: the 20-year-old female college dropout shared nearly nothing in common with the numerous working-class adult men who’d gone missing.

“So that means you’re just gonna ignore the obvious signs here?” Bea pressed ragefully.

“Until we can even explain anything at all about the other disappearances, there really isn’t any point to connecting Mae’s case to theirs, is there?” The crocodile silently fumed while Molly breathed deeply, the officer at least attempting to collect herself and break away from the stress weighing her down. “Needless to say, I’m more concerned with _finding_ Mae and everyone else rather than knowing why half the town seemed to vanish. Questions like that can wait for later.”

 _I can get behind that,_ Bea decided, swallowing her frustrations in exchange for the promise of immediate action. In the end, it didn’t really matter what Molly _thought_ was going on as long as it didn’t affect the search for the missing cat. “What’s the plan for finding her?”

“Search parties are meeting out by the Food Donkey in half an hour,” Molly explained, “We’ll sweep the outskirts of town for _everyone_ who’s disappeared.”

“We’re checking the woods?” Bea swallowed. The abandoned grocery store was fairly close to the mines: if any brave soul ventured far enough out into the woods, a cave-in would definitely attract their attention. Yet at the same time, the mines were the only place that made any sense for the cat to run off to–not that the crocodile was buying into Molly’s crackpot theory, just that, well…

 _Mae’s already tried to take on those mines by herself once._ Then, it had only been the timely arrival of Bea and the others with the addition of a well-placed crossbow bolt from Gregg which kept the cat safe. The crocodile hoped that Mae was in a better state of mine after they’d dealt with the apparent demon affecting her dreams, but it was still the first place that came to mind.

“There’s been no sign of them elsewhere across town,” Molly offered. “The woods are our next best guess.”

“Okay,” Bea responded, ignoring the way her scales seemed to itch with apprehension. The way she saw it, the search parties had just as much luck finding Mae out there as they did uncovering a trapped cult. “Half an hour?”

“Uh huh.” Molly nodded dismissively, distracted by the sight of a full moon peeking out from over the horizon. The glowing circular satellite, much larger than usual, filled the night with its pale moonlight, seeming to be the only stroke of good fortune to befall Possum Springs on that dreadful night. Any advantage to visibility for the search parties was one Molly wanted to make the most of. “Bring Gregg and Angus too.”

* * *

Thinking about it now, maybe Steve was right: Possum Springs was a town full of people who loved going missing.

Between breaks, Gregg found that the missing person posters around town multiplied, first from one report to three, from three to six. Little white sheets coated the town like a fine dusting of snow, lining small town telephone poles and painting the buildings white.

And so, just like that, the fox’s worries had grown exponentially.

His conversation with Bea had helped. Or at the very least, it had relieved him from any further inclination to smoke: if the foul aftertaste wasn’t convincing enough for the mammal, the realization of how Angus would react certainly put his actions into perspective. No temporary relief from his anxieties was worth ruining what he had with the bear.

Now, the only distraction the fox needed was the big, fuzzy boyfriend waiting for him at home. As Gregg closed up the Snack Falcon, finishing his day after an unusually long 12-hour shift (which he actually completed without skipping out on early), he couldn’t help but try to force a bit of positivity into his mind. After a long day like today, watching shitty romcoms Angus had snagged from the video rental store while the two snuggled up on their couch was exactly what the fox needed–even if their sofa did still smell faintly of unwashed cat.

The pleasures of domestic partnership were exactly what Gregg needed to relieve himself from his worries. The mammal could only hope that his boyfriend wouldn’t mention the madness that had begun to descend on Possum Springs. The mines, the cult, the flyers and the missing person reports: Gregg had spent nearly half a day on his lonesome swirling those thoughts around in his mind, and he had to admit that anything else was preferable.

Locking the convenience store door, the fox stepped outside into the brisk autumn air. A short 100-foot walk was all that separated him from his apartment building–one of the few benefits from working at the Snack Falcon. The task had always been uneventful, with the homebound fox completing it too rapidly for anything of note to occur.

The journey began as vulpine eyes fell to the ground, willingly compromising their vision in order to prevent the appearance of white flyers in the fox’s peripheral. Instead, Gregg concentrated on placing each foot before the other, paying incredible attention to the trivial task of walking forward over the cracked cement sidewalk.

It was exactly for this reason that he nearly stumbled into the cat in front of Miller’s.

“Oh!” Gregg jumped back in surprise, eyes jumping up to see one Stan Borowski. The older cat was standing motionlessly out by the entrance to the Trolley Tunnel, with his back to the street. While the fox had hardly recognized his presence until he was practically on top of him, Mae’s father didn’t notice Gregg until the mammal sputtered out a sudden apology. “Sorry about that, Mr. Borowski.”

It was only when the feline turned to face the fox that Gregg realized something was terribly wrong. In the glow of the neon sign for Miller’s tavern, Stan’s glasses shimmered reflectively, almost hiding the heavy bags beneath his chestnut eyes. His frown hardly faltered in Gregg’s presence, making the fox’s forced pleasantries feel even more awkward.

The exchange carried on for far too long without a response, with Gregg’s anxiety building until he tried to call out to the cat once more. “Mr. Borowski?”

“Greggory,” Stan finally acknowledged. His voice hoarse and fur ruffled, the cat continued, “What’s a kid like you doing out here so late?”

“Just closing up the Snack Falcon, sir.” The entire dialog between them was painfully awkward, and they both knew it. However, they knew each other just enough through Mae that saying nothing would’ve been equally strange.

Gregg supposed that the few words they had traded might qualify as a complete (albeit forced) conversation; one that he could neatly conclude with a meek goodbye, before going on his merry way. Yet there was something so obviously wrong with his best friend’s father that he felt obliged to at least try prodding the cat for details, even if it was the sort of attempt that is halfheartedly made with the express purpose of being shot down quickly so that their discussion might naturally come to an end.

In retrospect, Gregg should’ve just continued on his way.

“Is everything… alright?” The obvious answer was _no,_ and the fox should’ve known it. That weren’t many reasons for a man like Mr. Borowski to stand idly outside Miller’s bar at nearly 7 at night. Especially since he was a cat who didn’t drink–or at least, had stopped drinking, according to the drunken tangents of his daughter. What Gregg didn’t want to pay attention to were the papers taped to the wall in front of them, or the stack of white flyers in Stan’s paws.

“…” The silence that encompassed them was completed with the cat’s heavy sigh. Stan turned to face the wall once more, except this time, Gregg’s eyes couldn’t help but follow the other’s gaze, falling onto the anthology of missing person reports that decorated the stone staircase.

He found it before he knew what he was looking for: a seventh disappearance that had joined the ranks of the other six posters the fox had already familiarized himself with. Like a vacuum, it sucked away any feelings of distress or guilt Gregg had harbored and replaced them with a wave of debilitating panic. For hours, the fox had begged for a distraction of any sort to displace those exact emotions: now, the cruel mistress of fate had fulfilled his wishes in the worst possible method.

“It’s awful, isn’t it?” Stan’s words hardly registered for the fox. “Even with all the other disappearances, you never expect it to be someone–” The cat choked on his words, struggling to keep his emotions under control. With eyes trained to the newest poster, Gregg could guess what Stan’s next words were going to be easily enough.

“Yeah.” His mouth felt dry, his voice cracking under the stress of further use. “You don’t.” No matter how hard he tried, Gregg couldn’t seem to will his eyes away from the small paper flyer. Its appearance felt familiar enough after the day he’d had, surrounded by similar missing person posters. Yet the subject of this particular flyer stirred up emotions unique from the other six. Where there had been guilt, tormenting his soul, confusion and distress now plagued the mind of the young mammal; where he had sought excuses for their actions, he now scoured for an explanation.

It occurred to the fox that he was still outside, in the middle of Possum Springs’ downtown. Simply upon seeing the poster, Gregg had frozen where he stood, receding into the depths of his head for answers that weren’t available to him. Mr. Borowski seemed equally incapacitated by his thoughts.

“I… I have to go.” The fox left the older cat on his own, hardly able to force out the hasty declaration of his rapid departure. As his brain caught up to the events, making sense of this is despite how illogical it seemed, he realized with a start that he needed to get somewhere private.

Navy eyes tore themselves violently from the poster, focusing Gregg’s attention on making it off the street and into his apartment building before he exploded. From the moment he’d laid eyes on that first flyer, the torrent of his emotions had been stalled by a fragile dam, and he’d been so effing close to making it through the day without it bursting. It would have only been another few dozen steps to the safety of his apartment, and the comforting presence of his boyfriend to serve as a repairman for his fracturing mental stability. Yet he’d been completely blindsided by the newest revelation, so utterly unprepared for the seventh disappearance that the rug had been swept out from beneath him.

Gregg let the building door swing closed behind him as he entered the lobby. Thankfully, the elevator was empty, and he was free to close himself off in the metal box as the first tears began to present themselves.

 _This isn’t happening._ Not now, when the cruel irony of it all made the fox feel sick. Those same initial reactions he had had four long months ago repeated as he once again tried to make sense of the disappearance of another feline friend.

It was Casey, all over again. And yet, at the same time, it wasn’t. Because Casey’s disappearance was caused by the disturbing cult in the mines–the same cult they’d buried, sending literal tons of stone cascading down on their heads and destroying the site of their sacrificial ritual–which couldn’t possibly explain why another cat would go missing now.

Elevator doors parted. Gregg pushed himself off of the elevator wall; he hadn’t even realized he’d been leaning up against it for support. Somberly, he strode down the hallway to his apartment, silent tears welling in his eyes. With a surprisingly steady hand, he turned the knob of their unlocked door, opening the portal to his and Angus’ personal space away from the world. He forced himself to keep his composure even as he entered their home.

“Hey, Bug.” The bear’s warm welcome echoed from the kitchen, yet it couldn’t reach the voiceless fox. Like a ghost, a pale faced Gregg entered the apartment after failing to shut the door behind him, unable to conjure up the words to communicate with his beloved partner.

Across the apartment, Angus fiddled with the pan on the stovetop, busy attending to his cooking. Diced chicken and bell peppers simmered over the flame as the expert chef prepared a stir fry. “Bug?” Yet once again, the bear received no reply from his fox. Curiously, his legs carried him out of the kitchen to investigate. There, he found Gregg, standing lost in the center of their living room carpet with wet stained cheeks, teary eyed and mute.

The bear didn’t hesitate before he acted: taking the fox into his arms was simply second nature. In those fuzzy arms, Gregg finally cried out audibly, breathing out in an unintelligible whimper.

“I’m here.” Angus reassured. The fox made a piercing cry between two gasps for air. “I’m here, Bug.”

The words were just what Gregg needed to hear. If the seventh disappearance had been what had threatened to burst the dam guarding the fox’s emotions, Angus’ presence was the order to open the floodgates, pouring the other’s tears and emotions out to him. Stifling a sob into the bear’s shoulder, Angus could feel the fox’s sadness resonate within him as he helped absorb each tremor which racked his partner’s body. As the fox unraveled like a spool of wool in the bear’s arms, his legs began to fail him, turning to jelly as they gave out from beneath him. Angus held him, slowly lowering the pair to their carpet floor as the fox let the grief course through him. His sobs buried in the fur of his partner, the only noise his breakdown made were the sharp breaths for air the fox made desperately as his paws tightened their hold on the back of his lover, too afraid to let go and lose someone else.

“She’s gone.” Gregg was finally able to force the words out. Angus knitted his eyebrows in confusion, not sure what the fox was referring to, but trusting him to elaborate whenever he could manage. He final did so after several more gasps for air. “Mae’s gone.”

A flurry of questions raced through the bear’s mind; surprise and confusion swarm to the forefront of Angus’ thoughts, but he didn’t dare stop comforting Gregg for a moment so that he might sort out his own reaction. The how and why of it all could be saved for later, when the couple weren’t collapsed on the floor of their living room with arms circled around each other.

Angus found that the only proper response was to strengthen his grip on the fox, if only to remind him that he wasn’t alone. The bear’s hug tightened like a vise around the other while he stroked Gregg’s back comfortingly.

“Still here, Love.” It was as if the words rung out throughout the entire apartment despite the fact that they were whispered reassuringly into the canine’s ear. “I’m still here.”

“I know.” Gregg responded, feeling the relief that flooded through him from the other’s reminder. Thoughts of Casey’s own disappearance sprung up faster than the fox could squash them; no longer could Gregg keep separate the painful memories of the yellow cat’s pictures around Possum Springs with Casey’s ultimate fate. And now, it was Mae whose flyers joined the ranks of Possum Springs’ missing persons club. It was Mae who Gregg had seen just one night before, only to discover her unexpected disappearance without warning through the arrival of her posters. Like a Band-Aid being torn away, the tearing sensation of another life from his was something the fox was well accustomed to: only difference being that he had been able to convince himself that Casey had hopped a train and escaped from this miserable town, while Mae’s departure was undecided.

Gregg’s mind raced to the worst possibilities. Which each horrid thought, the fox squeezed his partner, relying on Angus to hug back reassuringly. Eventually, his muzzle came to rest in the crook of the bear’s neck; tears stained the collar of his white dress shirt as the fox desperately balled the back of Angus’ green vest into his palms. Even as the time between sobs extended and the wet tear ducts in foxy eyes drew closed, neither of them moved from the position.

And so that was how they were found: stranded like a lonely island in the middle of their living room, kneeling before one another with wet stains on their fur and the smell of burning stir fry through their apartment. Gregg and Angus looked up in the aftermath of the fox’s episode to find the source of a three-note knock on their door, only to find a blue crocodile standing solemnly in their open doorway.

* * *

It all honesty, the situation was more than a bit surreal, especially considering their last two trips into the woods.

_“Cooper Rogers!”_

Two dozen townsfolk had joined the search party. Molly and some officers from the neighboring communities–Saltztown and Briddle–led the volunteers through the dense forest which surrounded Possum Springs. The crunch of leaves beneath their feet filled the void between loud cries from a circulating list of names. 

_“Creek Walters!”_

It seemed strange to the trio that the quiet of the woods had been replaced by the shouts of a quickly mobilized search force; to hear the place so full of life and to see it occupied with people was a large departure from the previous experiences.

_“Edison Adams!”_

They moved with the moon as their guide, casting a pale light through the leafless late-autumn trees. Tens of flashlight beams scoured the surface, desperately probing for even a clue as to where the missing persons may have been.

_“Margaret Borowski!”_

Perhaps the worst part of it all was the blissful ignorance which the rest of the town acted in. Shouts for the cat were interspersed between cries for the cult members who’d tried to kill her–or at very least, had attempted to induct her into their satanic rituals. The officers and ordinary residents of Possum Springs didn’t have the slightest of understandings of what had been done out in these woods. But Angus knew, and so did Gregg and Bea.

_“Andrew Brooks!”_

They trio slipped away when they were close enough to the mines; the task of separating from the group being simple enough when they were spread out as far as they were. The police had begun the search without any indication of where the missing persons may have been, and so they’d hoped to cover as much ground as they possibly could.

_“Tommy Daminco!”_

Pushing through the naked limbs of fall trees and shrubbery, they found themselves on a familiar path: a bridge, a hill, some discarded minecarts and a sudden drop. The calls from the other volunteers faded away in the background as the three of them broke off in the opposite direction. It wasn’t long before their piercing pleas were smothered by the stretch of forest between them.

It felt weird without Mae. Of course, their last two trips into the woods that week couldn’t possibly be labeled _normal_ –a ghost hunt and a confrontation with a cult in their hometown weren’t the usual Saturday and Monday affairs for the cat’s friends–but the feline had been their de facto leader on these matters.

Now they stood atop the crest of the hill, before the land dipped down into the mines. To the place they all had so urgently wanted to purge from the thoughts only a few hours ago. This cave had been the cult’s hidden base of operations. Through the hole they had fed the supposed demon beneath Possum Springs. This was the site of their sacrificial slaughtering–as well as their incidental tomb.

“We’re here.” Gregg’s addition was redundant, but his statement was the first to break the silence which had settled over them since the start of their investigation.

They all knew Mae’s disappearance would lead them back here. Of the four, the cat had been the most affected by the cult and the so-called “Black Goat.” They all remembered how the feline’s voice had broke as she had recounted the demon “singing” to her in her thoughts, in her dreams, slowly wresting control of Mae’s life from her. None of them knew what was true, and they all had their personal perspective of the events which had unfolded two nights prior, but it was obvious what the cat _thought_ was real.

They had all assumed the cave-in had solved Mae’s issues, putting to rest any demonic threat or physical harm the cult members might do to them. At the very least, it seemed like the cat had been able to sleep soundly after their night in the mines, and Mae had spent the next day much more like herself. But in truth, they had no clue what they were doing–no clue what was going through the cat’s mind, and no explanation for why she might have vanished the night before.

They had returned here to rule out one possibility.

Gregg was the first to descend the hill; the fox slid down the slope, kicking loose fragments of dirt and rock as he rushed his way to the base of the incline. Angus suppressed the urge to caution the hasty mammal, knowing just how important this all was to him. Bea and the bear followed behind the fox, picking their way down the hill with reserved, wary steps.

“It’s still all blocked off.” Gregg called up to them after peeking into the tunnel. The rest of the group came up next to the fox and Angus shined his flashlight into the cavern: sure enough, the cave-in they’d caused hadn’t been circumnavigated, and the cascade of rocks they’d sent down on the cult’s headquarters remained.

Despite themselves, the stress of their situation immediately lessened and they let their rigid shoulders slacken for at least a moment. The confirmation that the main entrance remained closed was enough to draw a relieved sigh from the crocodile.

“We need to check the well,” Angus reminded them all, and suddenly the tension was back in droves. Stepping away from the cave, they filed back into line behind the fox, who began their march up towards another hill.

 _What were they really afraid of?_ None of them could tell for sure. They just knew that Mae had been stubborn enough to try heading into the mines on her lonesome before. Then, her stupidity had only been suppressed by her friend’s arrival. But if she had chosen to return once more…

“Um…” Gregg’s determined stride slowly petered out as they walked along the flat stretch atop the mound, leaving the other two to stop behind the confused fox. “It should be here. Like, somewhere.” Three heads rotated on a swivel, identifying the familiar patch of the forest they had first seen after climbing out from the mine’s alternative entrance. “I just don’t… see it.”

“I think we’re standing right next to it.” Before any of them could ask the bear to elaborate, Angus’ flashlight aimed at the spot a few feet beside them, where the flat hilltop slipped down into a sudden drop.

“Oh shit.” Bea’s words spoke for the three of them. No sign of the well’s stone wall or wooden roofing remained; all that endured a shallow hole, clogged by rubble and collapsed ground, filled by the once aboveground parts of what once was a well and not simply a collection of stone and lumber.

Gregg laughed reservedly–with as much amusement as one could expect in a situation like their own. “Germ and his dynamite really blasted the thing to hell, huh?” Indeed, the funny little bird had made good on his promise. The structure had been entirely leveled, to the point where the trio had nearly missed its spot entirely amid the moonlit trek through the forest. Thus, their greatest fears regarding the cat could be safely put to rest:

None of the cult members could have broken out of the caves. And no one could have gone back in.

It didn’t answer a lot of their questions. Obviously, confirmation that the mines remained sealed only proved that Mae hadn’t disappeared back down into them. The cat’s friends still had no clue where to find her, and even less of an explanation for why she had gone missing in the first place.

Yet for a short moment, none of that mattered much in the face of the intense wave of relief that collectively flooded over them. With their most pressing worry addressed, the trio were reassured that no matter where the cat was, it wasn’t down _there_. The breath of air they had all been holding in since they’d launched their off-the-books investigation was finally released. Shoulders slumped, sighs exhaled, and tension melted off their bodies. Bea herself began the task of lighting a celebratory cigarette.

Unfortunately, that relief was momentary.

It began as rustling in a nearby bush–Angus heard it first. The flashlight which had begun to dangle by his side in disuse snapped upwards, beginning to search through the tree line.

The bear opened his mouth: “What was that?” Off to his right, the crocodile apparently heard it too. Blue reptilian eyes jumped between the nearby shrubbery as Bea’s attention was briefly pulled away from sparking her lighter so that she might ignite the unlit stick balanced at the end of her mouth.

“What was what?” Gregg seemed to be the only one unaware of the noise.

“Sounded like something rustling in the bushes,” Bea determined. The group paused any further conversation, electing to stay silent and listen.

“Must’ve just been the wind,” Angus decided. After the week they’d had, he wasn’t surprised to find himself a bit jumpier than usual.

“Think it might’ve been an owl?” Gregg asked, his voice stained with dread.

“Nah.” Bea went back to lighting her cigarette. “Too low to the ground.”

“What if it was like… a burrowing owl.”

“In the forest?” The crocodile snorted. “Not likely.”

“Still. It could happen. And I don’t even have my crossbow to defend us.” The fox’s fear of the nocturnal birds of prey seemed to transcend all bounds–including logic.

“You think you could hit an owl with a crossbow?” Bea questioned sarcastically.

“Don’t need to hit him,” Gregg assured the reptile. “Just gotta scare ‘em off.”

“I hate to burst your bubble,” Angus interrupted. “But it’s definitely not an owl.” Fox and crocodile turned their attention towards the bear, who was still looking out at the bushes beyond them.

“Why’s that?” The orange mammal questioned.

“Last I checked, owls don’t whisper to each other.” As soon as the bear pointed it out, Bea and Gregg tuned it to the undoubtable sounds of someone whispering from behind the shrubbery. A second passed and another unidentified source–likely not an owl–whispered something else back. The barely audible exchange continued until an abrupt stop, as if there was a sudden realization on their spies’ behalf. In the ensuing silence, only the sounds of the forest and rapidly beating heartbeats carried to the trio’s ears.

“Oh fuck.” The natural reaction slipped from the fox’s mouth, only to be aggressively shushed by the crocodile across from him.

 _Be quiet._ Bea mouthed. Gregg nodded solemnly, deciding it was best not to be killed due to being a loudmouth. The trio stood in complete silence, unwilling to speak and not daring to move under the watchful eye of their unexpected spectators.

The seconds stretched on, but they heard no further noise from the nearby bush. _“Are they still there?”_ Angus whispered the question quietly enough that Bea wasn’t sure he’d said anything at all.

There was silence, and then a shrug from the crocodile. _Go find out._

 _Me?!_ The bear replied nervously, pointing at himself as if to confirm his scaly friend’s suggestion.

 _You’ve got the flashlight!_ Bea reasoned, beckoning to the possible blunt weapon in Angus’ hand.

“No thank you, but I’m not about to let my Cap’n walk straight into getting attacked.” Gregg interrupted the silent feud with a whisper that was noticeably louder in volume.

 _“Then how about you just go!”_ The crocodile ordered, and two sets of eyes turned towards Gregg.

“I mean… I’m the adorable, lovable one!” Gregg awkwardly reasoned. “I’m not supposed to die first! Why don’t you go?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bea huffed out a waft of smoke, apparently offended. Her argument with Gregg had escalated both of their voices above an audible whisper, and it was clear the trio’s secret observers could hear them now.

 _“How about we shut up and all go together?”_ Angus decided, deferring to reason in a last-ditch attempt to not get jumped amidst their pointless quarreling. The crocodile and fox both turned to face the commanding bear, uncomfortable with the idea but soon giving in to the logic of it.

They began the slow creep over towards one of the nearby bushes–to the site where they were previously able to pin down the sounds of poor whispering. Gregg to the left, trying to decide between getting behind or in front of his boyfriend; Bea off to the right, doing her best to smoke silently as her nicotine craving spiked up in their tense situation; and Angus, between the two, holding his flashlight more like a deadly club than an everyday utility.

Only when they were practically on top of the shrub was the silence broken by the sound of bloody screams as two bodies tumbled out before them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone had a spooky Harfest!
> 
> So this chapter took longer than expected to get out. Sorry about that. Last few weeks have been pretty busy. Plus there was that surprise release of the Deltarune demo on Halloween which pretty much stole my attention away from this project.
> 
> Hopefully this chapter gets you to start asking some questions. It's mostly here to lay out some ideas that will be developed throughout the story. I tried blending in a bit of humor to the end, since I'm notorious for writing over-the-top serious fanfics with no comic relief and that needs to stop cause I don't want to seem like some sort of brooding edgelord. However, I can't really say how natural it feels amid a chapter like this. 
> 
> As always, let me know in the comments what you think!


	4. The Weirdos of Possum Springs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not dead and neither is this story. A belated holiday gift. Happy New Year.

Lori Meyers was a weirdo.

It was a natural law of the universe: the sun rose in the east, the only things certain in life were death and taxes, and the rodent from the train tracks was a strange kid. Even the 14-year-old mouse herself could recognize that.

There was a reason Lori preferred the soothing isolation of Possum Springs’ rooftops above everything else: she kept away from the world by choice, burying herself in her passion for horror movies. The mouse’s perch poised above the town gave her the opportunity to sneak away from society, freeing her to work out the schematics of her projects.

 _And yet…_ the mouse sighed dejectedly, as she once again attempted to brush away the growing collection of snowflakes on the open page of her spiral notebook. _Days like this make it seem that the world’s conspiring against me._ The first snowfall of the season meant only bad news for the mammal’s favorite spot; soon the roofs would be covered with sheets of the packed ice, leaving no room for little mouse. Trying to climb up during the winter months would only leave her sprawled out against the pavement below.

 _Fine,_ Lori huffed out in frustration. As soon as she wiped the icy crystals from her drawing, a dozen others returned to take their place, staining the page with tiny droplets of cold moisture. _Your win, nature._ The rodent flipped the notebook shut and buried it back into her schoolbag, committing the design she was working on to memory.

She liked it up here enough to dread the coming winter months. Unlike most kids, Lori found little reason to conjure up excitement for the impending weeks. Holidays at home were hardly an event to look forward to, though more than anything, she hated the loss of her afterschool hangout.

It wasn’t that her home was bad. Lori just… preferred not to be there all by herself. Not when she could seclude herself above the center of town, lurking just out of sight from oblivious passersby. When the mouse thought about it, the sentiment probably didn’t make much sense. _I dunno,_ Lori surrendered, as she puffed out a breath of cold air and resigned herself to watching the water vapor freeze before her. Somehow, the mouse just felt less alone when she positioned herself above Possum Springs’ town center: even when she kept out of sight, she was still surrounded by people. It made her feel comforted by others in a way that her anxiety often forbade.

The familiar sound of a certain dark-furred feline, scaling over to Lori’s hideaway, caught the mouse’s attention before she saw her launch onto the rooftop. The timely appearance reminded Lori that her self-imposed isolation didn’t segregate her from the town entirely, as she received another visit from her unlikely friend.

Mae Borowski: Possum Springs’ resident Killer. In hindsight, the mouse supposed the nickname had been in poor taste. The last week of hanging out with her revealed Mae wasn’t the tightly wound, crazed murder-fiend the middle school rumors had suggested.

“Hey!” Lori cringed at the how excited she sounded simply to see the dark blue cat. She quickly reeled back her eagerness, trying to settle into a voice level normal to conversation. It was hard to restrain herself: she hadn’t seen Mae at all the day before, but the entire town knew the cat had been pulled out of the woods by the Food Donkey unconscious. “You okay?”

The cat plopped down unceremoniously beside her, quick to join the mouse on her mighty perch. “Hey,” she greeted back warmly. From appearance alone, Lori could tell Mae was doing better than two days prior.

“I heard you were like, in the hospital or something?” She tried to downplay it. Not make things such a big deal; after all, the rodent had a habit of doing that.

“Ha ha. Yeah,” Mae casually replied, laughing it off as if it were as inconsequential as an annual check-up.

“What for?” Lori hoped the concern she felt wasn’t evident in her voice, even if it was embedded directly into her question.

“Fell into a ravine while running through the woods at night.”

“…why?” Despite the mouse’s love of horror movies, there weren’t many occasions where one had to replicate the scenes so commonly found throughout the genre.

“Umm…” Mae paused for a second, like she was having trouble trying to describe the situation. “I was being chased by a death cult of conservative uncles.”

Lori narrowed her eyes, leveling her gaze questioningly over the other. The cat only smiled humorously. “Alright fine, you don’t have to tell me.” At the very least, Mae seemed to have regained her sense of humor, though her jokes kept a signature flavor of strangeness to rival Lori’s own. The pair let the silence hanging over them stretch on, until Lori finally swallowed her pride and asked the question she’d been dancing around. “So… you’re really okay?”

There wasn’t an immediate reply. Concerned, she turned to face the other mammal and found Mae lost in her own thoughts, as if she too had yet to decide. A gust of wind swept over Possum Springs’ rooftops, gently blowing on the cat’s overgrown red tuft of fur. “Yeah.” An answer finally came.  “Just been a weird few days.”

“Okay,” the mouse replied noncommittedly, before she could admit what was truly on her mind: “I got worried.”

“Aww…” The rodent’s eyes rolled as the cat taunted her concern for the other. Before Lori could protest, Mae’s paw found its way atop her head, where the feline playfully ruffled up the mouse’s gray fur. “I’m super tough,” the older mammal reassured. “Nothing’s gonna get me anytime soon.”

“Oh. Good.” Lori would be lying if she said the words didn’t bring some relief to her, or that she didn’t _slightly_ enjoy how the other affectionately messed up her fur. “That’s good.”

A comfortable silence engulfed them. High above the town, they were in a place where few passersby ever saw them, while they could look down on all the town’s residents. The duo let their legs dangle freely over the ledge, and it occurred to Lori–not for the first time–that they were just one slight readjustment away from falling from the rooftop, tumbling down the three or four stories to crash on the sidewalk. Maybe that would have scared some people: being so unnecessarily close to possible injury and death. But Lori was weird. She found the risk exhilarating, much like her habit of sleeping between the passing trains out by her house.

Glancing over to the dark-blue feline, she found the cat laying on her back on the flat rooftop with her legs draped over the ledge. Mae seemed just as lost in thought as the mouse, but despite this, the rodent still felt an overwhelming sense of companionship; she may not have had many friends, yet she’d never expected Possum Springs’ infamous Killer to be one of them. Yet Lori couldn’t help but feel a little glad she’d found someone else who was just as much an oddball as her.

“Hey.” The cat casually broke the silence between them. Still lying on her back, with eyes closed and simply enjoying the brisk fall air and the sensation of snowflakes landing on her face, Mae opened her mouth to speak. “You think they’ll ever figure out who messed up the dudes?”

 _Who?_ The mouse tilted her head in confusion. “The dudes?”

“The mural in the tunnel,” Mae elaborated, still unmoving from her resting position.

“Oh.” Lori had kinda forgot about that, to be honest. With how strange the cat’s last few days had supposedly been, the mouse was surprised she hadn’t. “I did that.”

“What?!” The smaller mammal’s heart lurched in surprise as Mae swung upward, sitting upright a bit _too_ quickly for someone who was inches away from plummeting down a large vertical drop. “Why?”

“I don’t know!” she squeaked out hastily.

“That’s not a reason?!” countered Mae.

Suddenly feeling self-conscious about her actions, Lori retreated inward. She hadn’t expected the cat to be so upset by her confession. _Is she actually mad?_ God, the mouse hoped she wasn’t: even if they’d only begun talking a week ago, the mouse actually liked having someone to hang out with. “Why do you care so much?”

“The dudes!” Mae’s highly refined argument was accompanied by wildly gesticulating hand signals that carried a meaning no civilized society could discern. “The dudes are sacred!”

“Why?” Lori couldn’t see how that could be the case. Nothing in this town meant anything. Nothing about Possum Springs felt _sacred_ : not the rickety old house she lived in, where bits of ceiling fell atop her sleeping body as trains passed by in the dead of night; not the shitty school they had to share with the two neighboring towns; not the job her dad had buried himself in after Mom passed. And certainly not some stupid mural.

“They’re like… a part of this place!” Mae argued, and it was true: the mural loomed over the failed trolley tunnel, mocking the one project that might have saved their failing rust-belt town from fading into obscurity.

“This entire place is royally messed up!” She was getting upset. Lori could tell that, and she knew she needed to calm down. Yet somehow, the mouse couldn’t ignore the urge to keep talking, to expose this wretched little town as what it was to someone that was actually listening. “And nobody cares!” At this rate, she would start hyperventilating soon. But for now, all Lori cared about was explaining herself to the cat. If only Mae could _understand,_ maybe she wouldn’t hate her.

God, she really didn’t want Mae to hate her.

The panic was building in the rodent’s chest, threatening to explode. The only way to ensure she didn’t break out into an attack amidst their conversation was to reel herself in. Tucking her legs up into her chest, pulling them away from the ledge of the rooftop, Lori took a deep breath, trying to will the sensation away. The cat beside her let Lori have a moment to collect herself.

Finally, Lori continued in a low whisper. “I wanted someone to notice things aren’t ok.” She tried sneaking a glance over to the cat, only to find Mae’s attention entirely focused on her. “This town is like a horror movie that never stops. And it’s not even a good one…”

There was a pause before the other responded, and Lori couldn’t help but worry what the other might think about her outburst. Truth was, Lori hated this town, and she couldn’t understand why anyone would ever come back to it; couldn’t comprehend why anyone would ever stay here, once they were old enough to leave. What was there even to come back to in Possum Springs?

“Yeah, it might suck.” The cat’s response carried through the wind, washing over Possum Springs and reassuring the mouse that she wasn’t the only one who saw what she did. “But, like… it’s our horror movie. And that’s kind of cool, right?”

“Yeah, but…” It _wasn’t_ , but at the same time Lori knew what Mae meant. Possum Springs was their hometown. It was where their parents grew up. It was all they were familiar with, but it was that mindset of sticking close to what one was used to that brought the cycle of each new generation being trapped in the backwater county.

Yet even if Lori didn’t like it, it was _theirs._

“Yeah.” Mae seemed to see the gears turning inside the mouse’s head. “I know. I have the same thing inside of me.”

“The thing,” Lori repeated, agreeing solemnly.

“The thing.” The cat nodded.

Lori sighed. Looking outward, past the houses and buildings of Possum Springs, she saw the forest which completely ensnared the tiny town. Dead looking trees who’d lost their leaves mimicked the dying settlement they called home. “I feel like no one cares. Everything just… sucks forever.” Every time the rodent thought about the town, she got the same terrible feeling in her gut: Possum Springs resembled the nameless towns of her horror flicks a little too well. They put up the front of a quant little country town, but beneath the surface, they were dying. _But not from some monster,_ Lori decided. _Just from the town itself._ “There’s this thing coming for us. Happening to us.”

“Yeah but like, this isn’t advice I’m good at taking…” Lori glanced over to the cat to find a sympathetic smile on her face. “But sometimes things are big enough and bad enough that they’re unkillable. But, ya know…. life goes on.”

The mouse scowled, directly at the feline. “Yeah, that’s not really comforting.” But Mae was right. Looking out over the surrounding community, Lori saw a sprawling collection of buildings and houses that despite all odds should have been put to rest many years ago. And sure, it had begun to dwindle: the town had lost its factories and the mines, retired the Food Donkey and closed the park store, and had its traffic stolen by the highway. But Possum Springs was alive, regardless of the injuries it sustained. As if wreathing beneath the surface of their harmless rural community was a foul monster that could never be pinned down in one spot. _You can’t kill a town._

(Technically that wasn’t true, since Lori’s vandalized message to nuke Possum Springs was still an acceptable solution. Unfortunately, the rodent lacked the resources and influence to pull off such a task.)

Ignorant of the rodent’s internal musing, the cat only laughed at the other’s pouting. “Well I’m still working out a better pep talk for myself, too.” Once again Mae reached out to toss up the fur on Lori’s head, and the mouse made minimal effort to stop her.

Giggling lightly, Lori tried her best to put the gloomy mood behind them. “Fair enough,” she surrendered. She hadn’t expected the cat to have an answer for her problems; it just felt good to vent when someone was actually willing to pay attention.

Another few seconds passed with the return of an easy silence casting over them before the cat brought forth another new topic. “Ya know, does your family do stuff for the holidays?”

The surprise question caused Lori to quickly squeak out an answer. “My dad’s usually away on Thanksgiving. But he’s home for Longest Night.”

“Okay,” Mae acknowledged, and that seemed to be the end of it. Yet as soon as the mouse opened her mouth to ask what that was about, the cat continued, “You should come do Thanksgiving at my house.”

The panic Lori had previously squashed surged back unexpectantly. Yet instead of feeling threatened by the possibility of losing her new friend, this time the nervousness came from the idea of trying to navigate her way through such a social interaction. “Oh no. No no no.”

“Come on. We have 4 chairs and there’s only 3 of us. The other chair usually just has junk on it,” Mae tried to downplay the event but the mouse was still overwhelmed by the invitation. Lori was bad is situations like that–and the fact that there would only be 3 people besides her meant she couldn’t slip away into the background and let others do the talking.

Her breathing was getting strained. “No no no. I can’t.” Politely, she tried to decline the cat’s invite through a string of hasty refusals.

“Why not?”

Such a simple question, but Lori was not prepared to answer it. She had begun to hyperventilate; desperately, she fought for two large gulps of air before responding to the best of her ability. “It’s fine. It’s fine it’s fine it’s fine it’s fine–”

“Hey, hey.” Mae interrupted her. “Okay. We can talk about it later.” The idea that they’d need to revisit this conversation topic later only made the mouse even more anxious.

The rodent’s head was swarming with panic. Her social anxiety more than made the idea of Thanksgiving with the Borowski family seem like a road to disaster, yet at the same time, she couldn’t believe Mae had offered to do something so nice for her.

The gasping continued. Between urgent wheezes, Lori expressed her gratitude. “Thank y-you.”

“You ok?” Mae looked ready to shoot up from her seat at the roof’s edge, prepared to aid the mouse as soon as she said the word. “Can I do anything?”

“No, it’s c-cool I just need to s-sit here and be q-quiet for a while.” The rodent was touched by the feline’s concern, but Lori knew best how to handle her panic attacks. Amidst a tidal wave of stutters and sputtered gasps for air, the mouse tried to choke down the gathering ball of panic.

“Ok. I’ll just… leave you alone then.” The cat appeared visibly uncomfortable with the idea of abandoning the distressed mouse, but Lori didn’t stop her. Slowly, Mae pushed herself up, standing over the rodent, who was still struggling to regain control of her lungs. “See you tomorrow, probably.”

The cat inched away, throwing hesitant glances back toward to mouse. Just as she reached the edge of the rooftop, Lori managed to squeak out another word. “Mae?”

“Yep!” The cat seemed ready to return to her seat beside the mouse, but Lori had other ideas.

“Thanks for… h-hanging out with me.” Her last thanks didn’t fully express the mouse’s gratitude.

“No prob kid,” the cat replied easily enough, smiling at the mouse. Maybe Mae didn’t realize the magnitude of what she had done for Lori, but younger mammal truly was grateful. “Try not to like, burn something down in the meantime.”

“Ha ha ha.” A final wheeze escaped the mouse alongside her gentle laugh.

“See ya!” The feline flashed a final grin, waving goodbye before jumping down from the rooftop and disappearing out of sight.

Neither of them could have known it then, and Mae’s comments had been innocent enough.

But the very next day, the only sign of the dark-blue feline that Lori Meyers could find was a little white flyer.

* * *

If there was anyone to match the mouse’s weirdness, it was 18-year-old Jeremy Warton.

His oddball nature shown even through his unconventional nickname. To the friends of Germ Warfare, he seemed to faze in and out of existence without warning, escaping away from the civilization for sometimes days at a time, only to reappear amid the most unexpected locations. He gravitated towards the strangest spots, to places stuck in an otherworldly limbo, outside the rest of society, like deserted parking lots, with asphalt broken up by rogue weeds on a course for nature to reclaim its turf, and sewage systems inhabited by chip-loving wild possums.

He was just like that. Difficult to understand, and even harder to predict what he might be found doing next. Though more than anything, reading the bird’s emotions was an impossible task, so much so that others–and even himself–seemed to forget he had them.

The dark blue bird, in his all-black getup, meandered down the street, seemingly in no rush to avoid the walls of white that lined the road. To the untrained eye, it seemed the avian was entirely unaffected by the news of the disappearances.

In all fairness, that was hardly the case.

Upon hearing the news, his reaction was admittedly less… expressive than many of the town’s residents. Germ didn’t break down into tears–didn’t question the fundamental rules of the reality he’d once known–and he hardly batted an eye and pressed for reasons why such an event may have occurred. He was restless, not senseless, and his worries carried his feet down Main Street from their typical, stationary outpost by the departed grocery store.

Seven people gone, including Mae, who’d only just returned to Possum Springs half a month before. Although they had barely known each other for two weeks, the cat was one of those choice few who seemed to just _click_ with the avian. He supposed he could chalk that up to their shared experiences and the cat’s willingness to participate in whatever activity Germ proposed, but the truth was that weirdos just seemed to stick together in a place like Possum Springs.

The last time the bird had seen the reckless feline, she’d crawled out from the unused well in his backyard–a development so strange it almost managed to throw the bird. From then, they’d also needed to rescue Gregg, Angus and Bea and pull them up from the pit. They’d promptly tasked Germ with seeing it leveled to the ground, and the bird knew better than to ask questions when something needed to be blown to kingdom come: some sticks of dynamite, secured from his uncle’s demolition equipment, seemed to do the trick.

The bird could only guess as to what else may’ve been down in whatever cave those four emerged from. The four spelunkers had hardly been in the mood for chatting when they’d climbed out. Yet with the subsequent disappearances, one could start to assume what the bird had helped to accomplish.

The only thing that threw Germ for a loop was Mae’s own apparent vanishing.

His pointless wanderings carried him through the main square of Possum Springs: out by the Party Barn and the war memorial, into the center of town. Germ only ever went this far into town to watch band practice or work odd jobs at the Ol’ Pickaxe. He disliked hanging around the places where the rest of town tended to congregate: he much rather preferred the community’s outskirts, by the tracks with the Crusties or on the bridge with Rabies. Today was only different because it seemed like no one else wanted to hang around outside, regardless of where the bird chose to search.

Given recent developments, Germ supposed it was only fair.

Nevertheless, the bird took the rare opportunity to explore an empty town proper in an attempt to clear his mind. Dusk had settled over Possum Springs, in the wake of what the bird presumed to be the largest mass disappearance in the town’s history. It seemed Mother Nature worked to compliment the troubled mood seeping over the deserted town: just as the winds roared from the forests beyond, shaking the barren trees relentlessly and howling horribly over the tops of homes and offices, the streets lay abandoned by people, as if it were the dead of night and not the end of the workday. In Germ’s path, no resident of Possum Springs could be found, as if the town’s remaining residents had already stowed themselves away in fear of being the newest disappearance.

Possum Springs was trapped in its own personal fallout, and the rows of white flyers were torn away from their posts by that same chilly breeze. Only those ghosts roamed the streets: the solitary inhabitants of their town seemed to be the faces of those who had disappeared in it.

All was quiet. Even as Germ stood in the center of it, beneath the looming war statue and in the distant shadow of the abandoned glass factory, far out in the woods, he heard almost no sign of life. No salespeople, eager to get off of their shift. No little kids, playing together in their tightly-knit and safe rural community. No approaching trains nor mindless chatter.

All there remained was the rare sound of passing cars, or the cries of feral beasts that wandered the town.

Only when he was really listening could he hear the sound of desperate wheezing.

Avian feet carried Germ from the town square in the direction of the Ol’ Pickaxe. The noise, faint at first, almost akin to the sound of someone choking, quickly gained the bird’s attention. It conveyed urgency, and although he never broke out into a run, the sound gave new direction to his previous casual strolling.

It came from the narrow alley between the Pickaxe and the Family Practice; it seemed that Germ’s feet would carry him there, too. Only when he stood at the entrance to the small alcove, feet away from the source of the ruckus, did the bird realize he had no clue what he was doing.

Of course, Germ had never let petty things such as awkwardness or social boundaries determine his course of action.

“Hey.” He found her, knees drawn to her chest, hugging her body tightly with her face buried in her own lap–a young mouse girl, hidden behind a trashcan in the alley. The bird’s mind reached for something to say, settling on the only words that felt natural to him.

“I’m Germ.” _A lovely start._ The dark-blue avian had never been one for tact, as was made overwhelming evident by his introduction. Standing at the alley’s entrance, he cocked his head questioningly to the left. “Are you having a panic attack?”

It took half a minute before the mouse was able to catch her breath and look up at the bird. Between wheezes, confused and startled eyes landed on him and tried to rationalize the unexpected appearance. Even with the irregular rise and fall of her chest, the strangeness of the other’s direct engagement forced the little mouse to make a reply.

“...yes?” She huffed out a large puff of air not a second before sharply inhaling another.

“Try controlling your breathing.” Germ offered the obvious solution as he watched the rodent struggle to manage her oxygen. “You’ll want to slow down and exhale for longer than you inhale.”

“I’mfinethankyouverymuch–”

“I’ll do it with you.” The bird offered, seemingly unfazed by her protests. Glancing around, Germ found a back door that led further into the alleyway from the building beside them. “We’ll have our eyes follow the perimeter of the door. At the shorter lengths we’ll inhale. At the longer sides, exhale. Okay?”

The mouse didn’t speak for a moment. Instead, she fought a losing battle for control and eventual snuck a glance toward the avian between her urgent gasps, only to find his attention directed squarely on her. Squeamish under the other’s unwavering eye contact, Lori nodded, barely managing to squeak out a weak “Okay” in response.

Germ began the practice alone. Loudly, he inhaled as his eyes traveled across the top of the door’s frame, before initiating the much longer exhale down the door’s right side. His eyes never changed pace, even as his slow exhale extended beyond the time used to breathe in. At the door’s bottom, he repeated the strategy once again, taking in oxygen and filling his lungs with clean Possum Springs’ air. Only on the final side did he hear the mouse join him, managing a halting, jerky exhale.

It was little better than the chaotic wheezing the mouse had previously been subject to, but it was a start.

Their breathing followed the path of the doorframe again, then a third time, then however many Germ deemed necessary to fully calm the little rodent. It occurred to the avian that the younger mammal was not watching the door, but rather had her eyes trained on him. She followed his pattern of breathing, watching his changes in inhaling or exhaling, and it resulted in a delay where the mouse’s breathing lagged slightly behind the bird. Slowly over the course of several cycles, Germ began to time his breaths a bit longer, allowing him to wean the differences between their patterns down bit by bit into nonexistence. By the end, the two were in perfect synchronization, and her hyperventilation had been reversed.

“I-uh...” The gray rodent moved to speak, struggling for her words and stunned to find herself on the other side of the attack. “Th-thanks.”

“No problem.” The bird leaned up against the wall, opposite of the newly calmed mammal.

With her panic attack gone, she deemed it necessary to make proper introductions. “I’m Lori, by the way. L-Lori Meyers.” The awkwardness of the situation wasn’t lost on the mouse even if it hardly seemed to register with the bird, “I know you said your name’s Germ, but aren’t you Jeremy War...ton?”

“Germ is fine.” Hardly anyone had called him by his real name since middle school, but in a small town like Possum Springs, it was no surprise that someone had heard of him.

“Oh. Sorry,” the mouse quickly apologized.

“It’s cool,” Germ brushed it off, hardly offended by the misstep.

A stuttering Lori managed to squeak out more questions. “…Do you, uh, usually help people with panic attacks? Or do you get them y-yourself?”

“Neither, really.” It was a skill he picked up years ago, but Germ couldn’t say he had put it to use for quite some time.

“Oh.” Lori twirled her thumbs in her hands, searching her brain for some way to continue the conversation. “Well you’re pretty good at it. I’ve never used the door trick before.”

“Thanks.” Germ accepted the compliment in a single word, absorbing the praise without really acknowledging it. The pair, now without the pressing issue of Lori’s panic attack, no longer remained in a state of urgency. On the ground, the mouse sat, eyes jumping around to anywhere besides the avian who stood across the alley from her. Above the bird’s bright yellow beak, two black beads trained directly on Lori, only heightening her discomfort. “Do you usually hang out in alleyways of trash?”

The rodent glanced toward the trash can beside her, chuckling awkwardly as she scratched the back of her neck. “No, I… uh… This is a first.” Lori didn’t fit her feral rodent counterparts quite so well; in fact, the way Germ pointed out to her that she was sitting amidst a literal pile of filth only made her want to go home and shower.

“It’s cool if you do,” the bird stated, sliding down the wall of the Possum Springs Family Practice and matching Lori’s seat on the ground. The pair sat across from one another with perhaps a few inches between them; they alleyway had never exactly been spacious. “Some of my best friends are trash.”

“Really?”

“No.” Germ monotoned. “That was a joke.”

“Oh.” Lori felt stupid for not picking up on that, but the bird’s consistent tone didn’t convey the fact that he was kidding all too well.

“But I have hung out in weirder places.” He really wasn’t fazed by the concept of her residing amongst literal trash.

“I’m really not here to partake in dumpster diving,” the mouse protested, amusement spreading across her lips in a small smile.

“Then why are you here?” The bird’s large pupils focused on the mouse, prompting her for an answer.

Although innocent, Germ’s question led her mind back to the origin of her attack. As the minutes rewound in Lori’s thoughts, her path took her back to the collection of white flyers she’d seen on Main Street, and her clenching fingers uncoiled around a crumpled copy of the single poster that sent her spiraling over the edge into pure panic.

Noticing the offending item, balled up in the mouse’s hand, Germ instinctively reached out for it. He gently broke the other’s grasp on it, removing the paper from shaking palms. The tightly scrunched up ball, once uncrumpled, revealed a poster that the bird was more familiar with than he cared to admit.

It was Mae’s.

“Oh.” Germ let his hands carry the paper to the ground, scowling at the familiar image of the vanished feline. He should’ve known that any trip to the center of town wouldn’t relieve him from worries of the missing cat’s fate, but the bird was certainly thrown for a loop that this apparently random mouse was familiar enough with Mae to care about her disappearance. After all, what were the chances it’d be Mae and not any of the other missing persons? “You know Mae?”

“Y-yeah.” The reminder of the event sweeping over the town threatened to send Lori back into another attack. Her body shook and her breathing strained under thoughts of the unexplained list of casualties. “Her and I have been h-hanging out on the rooftops since she got back.”

“Ah.” Germ was unable to gauge exactly how much the rodent knew about the recent events regarding the cat. Nonetheless, the two would have to be fairly close to produce the reaction elicited from Lori.

“I just don’t get how this could happen.”  The mouse pulled her legs in close as her lungs worked half-hazardously.

Germ sighed sympathetically. It seemed likely she _didn’t_ know: didn’t know about the cult, about the mines, or even about what’d been going on with Mae in the recent weeks. It wasn’t his place to enlighten her, especially if her connection to the cat was as weak as it seemed. “Sometimes bad things happen. And sometimes they happen a lot.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Lori whimpered, trying to hold back another attack. “It literally doesn’t make sense. Why is it that Mae’s disappearance is c-completely separate from the others?”

Germ knew he should interrupt and prevent Lori from having another attack, but the bird was blindsided by what she said. “…what was that?”

“Huh?” Lori glanced up towards the other, confused.

“How could you know that they’re all not connected?” Unfaltering black eyes stared the mouse down once again.

“Well… it’s the times, right?” Lori began to explain. “Some of my dad’s coworkers were among the main wave of disappearances yesterday, well before their shift in the morning, b-but I still saw Mae. That evening, I mean.” The mouse seemed to have already sketched out a working timeline of the disappearances, to the bird’s surprise. With info like that, Germ wondered exactly how long it would take police before they were led to the mines. With more than a half dozen disappearances already reported, it wasn’t as if they lacked an incentive to solve this case; at the very least, there were guaranteed to put more effort into solving this than Casey’s. “So, there must be some sort of mistake.”

“Unless they’re unrelated.” Germ glanced over the unassuming mouse. Truth be told, he was just as much at a loss regarding the cat’s vanishing act as her. “Maybe Mae just skipped town with some bad timing.”

“Like the Hartley kid?” Lori pondered over the thought for a moment before shaking her head. “No. I’m sure she would’ve told me.”

“What makes you think that? Casey never told his friends he was leaving town.” Germ knew Gregg had been devasted by the orange cat’s sudden departure; he’d left without a word to nobody, and nobody had heard anything from him since.

The mouse thought for a moment, trying to disprove the idea. “Mae invited me to have Thanksgiving at her house. And say what you will about Mae, but she doesn’t promise someone something and then immediately turn around and leave town… I mean, at the very least, she’d probably need a few days to forget that she made the offer, but still.”

“You were gonna have Thanksgiving with Mae?” The little mouse only continued to surprise Germ. He’d assumed that her relationship to the cat was flimsy at best, but the more they talked, the more it seemed she was as close to Mae as Germ himself.

“Well… I never gave her an answer, but it was something we talked about.”

“What else makes you so sure she didn’t bolt?”

“Well, I mean… it _is_ Mae.” The rodent eased up a bit, relaxing the tension in her back as she recounted their strange feline friend. “She’s one of the few people who seems to like it here.”

“I like it here,” Germ stated.

“Good for you.” Lori glanced up to look at the bird with a new sort of look in her eyes, as if she was trying to figure out just what kind of strange person this bird was. “But most of us can’t stand Possum Springs. Most of us want to take our first chance to get out of here and run far away.”

“That’s true.” Gregg and Angus would be doing just that in the spring. And Bea had often voiced her own displeasures despite being figuratively and financially shackled to the Ol’ Pickaxe.

“But not Mae.” Lori shook her head. “Mae’s the only person I know to leave college to come back here. The only person who’ll defend this place for no other reason other than it’s _ours._ She’s not the type of person to leave this place behind, uprooting her life from her hometown in an instant. Especially since she just came back from college for it… I… I don’t understand why that is, but it just seems to be the case.”

“I think you’re right.” Germ finally conceded. “I don’t think Mae ran away.” That only begged the unspoken question that even the bird had no answer to.

“So, what do you think happened?” Lori prodded the avian.

“No clue.” Germ admitted, before cocking his head back towards the mouse. “You’ve got any ideas?” The unassuming little mouse only surprised him the more they spoke; perhaps she’d struck a theory he’d missed.

“I… I don’t know.” Lori admitted miserably, her shoulders slumping against the brick wall. For the first time, Germ noticed the black bookbag off to the rodent’s side; even if her short stature hadn’t given it away, the mouse was clearer younger than him, still being in high school. Yet shame on the bird for assuming that would deter the young rodent from trying to put two and two together. “But I figure it’s got something to do with those woods out by the Food Donkey.”

“Why’s that?” She was entirely right–Germ was just as certainly this all had something to do with the woods Mae and her friends had discovered the cult in.

“That’s out by where the search party’s planning to meet up.” Just down main street, a good half mile past they sat, back where the black bird had come from. “And it’s where they pulled Mae out of the woods.”

“You think that’s related?”

“I’m not saying it’s _not_ related.” Lori looked up at the bird determinedly, and in her navy-blue eyes Germ could see the gears turning in her mind, trying desperately to explain what she couldn’t possibly predict. Even he didn’t know the full extent of things–the black bird’s knowledge extended to the mere understanding that there was or had been a cult out by the old mines, that they’d chased down and stalked Mae and her friends, and that not too long after the same group emerged from the well in Germ’s backyard and tasked him with destroying the structure.

“Okay.” The bird made a split-second decision off gut instinct alone; this mouse had only continued to surprise him throughout their conversation, reaching many of the same conclusions Germ had, and proven to be just as impacted by the cat’s disappearance as himself. “So what next?”

“E-excuse me?” The mouse didn’t seem to follow the line of conversation.

“You’ve got a hunch.” Germ explained. “Now what are you gonna do about it?”

“I mean… nothing?” Lori rubbed the back off her neck lightly awkwardly. “It’s only a hunch. A weak one, at best. It would be better to leave the actual investigating to the police.”

“So… you aren’t interesting in searching for Mae?” The bird’s questioned. Maybe he had misread her; overestimated her just as quickly as he’d underestimated.

“No, it’s just that…” A flustered rodent searched for the words to describe it. “I’d just sorta be useless.”

“Why’s that?” The bird kept that same quizzical look, with his head turned on a diagonal.

“Because I’m like…” Lori’s hand’s gestured emptily as she struggled once more. “Like what could I possibly do better than the actual police? I mean… they probably already suspect as much.”

“So?” Germ prodded. “That’s no reason not to try and find your friend.”

“I’m not exactly much help to her running about the woods without a clue, am I?” A frustrated Lori barked back. “Especially not if I get lost and the cops have to find me, too.”

“…” Germ looked over the rodent for a minute in complete silence. _A classic case of lack of confidence._ He had already made his decision, but he let the other stew in her own thoughts for a moment. Then, without warning, the navy-blue bird rose to his feet.

“I’ve got something to show you.” Lori looked back towards him to find an empty hand extended in her direction. Her eyes followed the birds palm up to his face, where serious black eyes stared back at her from on high. “Something about why Mae might’ve gone missing.”

* * *

“I’m… not really sure about this.” Lori admitted, shouldering past barren tree branches as if they were the grasping limbs of horrid monsters amid the darkness. The two teens trekked through the forests of Possum Springs with nothing but the pale moonlight overhead to guide them; they’d slipped past the gathering search party with only a quick glance into the crowd of anxious adults. They weren’t here to help search for the half dozen others who’d befallen a fate unbeknownst to the world; they came only for Mae. And so, they made their journey to the site of their own personal investigation, a location known only to Germ.

“We’re close now,” the eccentric bird assured her, leading the wandering mouse deeper into the overgrowth. This entire situation was absurd and every warning sign in the mouse’s mind flared red. Years of “stranger-danger” programming and rabid horror movie consumption tipped her off to all the ways this could go wrong. By following the navy-blue avian she’d _just_ met deep into woods, Lori was inherently taking the risk that he wasn’t some sort of cannibal, or the secret serial killer Possum Springs had always lacked. Of course, there was also the much more mundane yet still terrifying possibility that he was luring the naïve rodent into a trap in order to kidnap her.

 _I should’ve just gone home._ Lori couldn’t believe she’d allowed herself to be talked into this–or more aptly, that she’d been intrigued enough to follow Germ up on his offer. _What could this dude possibly know about Mae’s disappearance?_ Probably nothing, to be honest. That had likely been bait to drag Lori away from the center of town, to somewhere less populated with a smaller chance of getting help.

Still, with a forest swamped with search parties, Lori could at least take comfort in the fact that they’d find her body warm.

But if there was even a chance that this bird really did know something, there was no way in hell Lori was gonna pass up on the opportunity to help her feline friend. The rodent continued to eye Germ, who never escaped her gaze, so that he couldn’t catch her unawares. _Even if it means taking a sketchy walk into the night._

 _At least he seems nice,_ another, more innocent portion of the mouse’s mind offered. The mouse had never met someone so willing–and capable–of treating her panic attacks. Then again, it was always the nice ones that turned on you and stuck a knife into your ribs. No self-respecting serial killer or monster-in-disguise tried to lure victims in by being an asshole.

She had to prepare herself for the worst. Clutching the strap of her bookbag, she figured she could use it as a projectile to stun the bird for a few seconds if she needed to make a break for it. Admittedly, Germ was pretty scrawny, but so was Lori. It might’ve been a fair fight if he didn’t have a couple years on her.

“Where are we even going, anyway?” Lori asked cautiously, glancing about the dead looking forest. Maybe if she paid attention to her surrounding as well as the bird, she wouldn’t miss any obvious signs of danger. Like human heads on skewers.

“The last place I saw Mae.” Germ answered plainly, continuing his path forward.

Lori casually pushed beneath a branch. “Which was?”

“Right behind my house.” The bird answered without missing a beat, as if completely unaware of how it might sound to the younger mouse.

“O-oh.” That was as close to, _hey! I kidnapped your friend and I’m probably gonna kidnap you too!_ _Why? Because I’m crazy!_ as one could get. “Okay.” Lori replied simply, trying to hide the fact that her mind was racing in the background.

 _What’s the plan here?!_ The mouse questioned herself. Did she bolt now and risk alerting her potential kidnapper? Or did she play along, try to rescue Mae, and free them both?

…Judging from the severe lack of faith in her own physical abilities, Lori was gonna have to shelve that second option.

 _If I run now, I’ll have no clue where Mae is._ It would also give the crazy bird the chance to move the feline to a secondary location. (Or, well, it was probably a tertiary location in this case, but that didn’t make the cat’s chances of survival any better.) It seemed Lori’s best option was to play along for now, find where the psycho was holding Mae, and try to make a break for it and alert the search parties. Then, she might just–

“We’re here.”

“We’re–wait what?” Lori shook herself from her thoughts, surprised to find Germ’s last know siting of the missing mammal to be a seemingly random portion of the woods. She’d expected a creepy cabin, with a suspicious looking cellar door. Or at least some holding cages and a campfire. What she found was a clearing with some trees, which was remarkably _unremarkably_ considering that Possum Springs was surrounded by them.

“This is where I saw her.” Germ elaborated. “And Gregg. And Angus. And Bea.”

“Who?” _Wait, no._ Lori recognized some of those names from when she and Mae had been talking. Those were the cat’s friends–the group she’d gone to school with and who she hung out with now that she was back in town. “So, you didn’t kidn–” She quickly cut herself off, stopping the words from slipping out her mouth.

“I didn’t what?” Germ cocked his head to the side, doing that weird quarter tilt that the mouse came to expect whenever the bird was confused by something. It seemed to be a sort of quirk of his.

“Nevermind,” the rodent hastily shelved her assumption that the strange little bird was a sociopathic murder-crazed lunatic. Making such a leap in reasoning wasn’t exactly very polite. “Just, uh… tell me more.”

“About?” If Germ recognized how flustered the mouse was, he made no mention of it.

“When you saw Mae.” Lori glanced around, looking for any distinguishing features amid the small clearing in the woods. Maybe there was some sort of abandoned old car. Or a hollow stump for rabble-rouser young adults to stow away booze. “You said it was here. When did you see her?”

“Monday night. Or like, really early Tuesday morning.” Lori tried not to seem too disappointed. Tuesday morning still put the date before the last time the mouse herself had seen Mae, and even then, the police had pinpointed the cat’s last known location to be on her way home that evening. So why was the bird even showing her this?

“So you were all hanging out?”

“No.” Germ shook his head once. “I heard Gregg yelling from the well.”

“The… well?” Lori glance around once more. She saw no well. “Where’s that?”

The bird turned halfway away from the mouse and signaled forward with his head. “Used to be right there.”

“…Used to?” Lori mimicked uselessly.

“I blew it up.” Germ explained. “With dynamite.”

“…With–I’m sorry.” The rodent gripped her head helplessly, rubbing against her temple. “I think I lost you. Why did you blow up the well?”

“Mae asked me to.” _Okay yeah that seems entirely in character for her,_ Lori sighed, accepting the fact that everything involving the cat seemed to inherently get a lot more complicated. And destructive. “And I’m assuming that’s because of the cult.”

The mouse let the bird’s line replay for a moment, just to ensure that she’d heard him correct. Only when she was certain that she hadn’t experienced a rare seizure in her ears did she hazard to confirm what had been said. “…the what?”

“I think Mae wanted me to blow up the well because of the cult.” Germ repeated plainly, apparently deciding that required no explanation.

 _“What cult?”_ Lori hissed.

“The one Mae and the others discovered,” Germ began slowly adding on detail, but none of it was quite enough to grant the mouse the luxury of understanding. “They were who chased Mae into a ravine when she got injured.”

“Are you kidding me–” With a very vivid jolt of memory, Mae’s offhand comment about why she’d even been in the woods preceding her trip to the hospital repeated in Lori’s mind. What had seemed to be a strange joke was starting to seem… “No. That’s ridiculous.” _There was no cult in Possum Sp–_

“Gregg said they were a bunch of weird dudes in cloaks,” Germ recounted. “Out by the entrance to the mine. They broke one of their own member’s legs and stalked Bea once they all got back into town.”

“No…” They were talking about Possum Springs here. Not some town from her horror movies. Lori shook her head instinctively. “No no no…” _There’s no cult here. No cult in Possum Springs._ Even as she tried convincing herself, holes in the theory made themselves apparent.

 _Why would Germ bother lying?_ Maybe this was all some complicated prank orchestrated by the kids in her class to make fun of her obsession by convincing her she was living in a real-life horror flick. It was too outlandish. It reeked of fiction, and yet the situation in town–seven people missing and counting–had been just as unexpected.

“Wait.” As the gear’s in Lori’s mind began to turn, she suddenly realized _why_ the bird had brought her out here. “So… you’re saying these disappearances are all related to this cult?”

“I’m not saying that they’re _not_ related.” He mimicked her previous response and the mouse’s mind whirled into overdrive.

“But… but…” But that was absurd. She’d lived in Deep Hollow County all her life and there had never been anything that remotely pointed towards the existence of a secret cult. Then again… _A cult could be what’s responsible for the disappearances._ It fit, which was possibly the worst part. _It made sense_. It explained so much about their present situation, even if the implications were indeed horrible. “This is all just…”

 _“Shh.”_ Germ shushed her, which was just _rich_ if he expected her not to question the possibility of a cloak-clad murder clan.

“They killed them?” Lori whimpered in disbelief as she hugged her churning stomach. She felt sick. She was going to be _sick._ Even if she was wrong–which she hoped she was–the thought alone was enough to make her want to vomit.

 _“Shh!”_ Again, the bird silenced her, turning his head towards her on a swivel. Obsidian eyes stared straight at her down a closed beak, with the universal _be quiet_ sign–a single finger–pressed before his mouth. Before Lori could ask if this was some sort of elaborate joke, she heard it too.

 _Footsteps._ Any reasonable mind would assume they belonged to members of the search party–or at least, all logic seemed to point in that direction. But there was another suggestion, a far-reaching, seemingly ludicrous idea that had just been planted inside the rodent’s mind and was being allowed to fester.

 _A cult._ In Possum Springs, operating in the shadows of the woods behind her hometown; meeting at night while she slept soundly just on the other side of town; climbing up the hill just feet away from them. Looking for more bodies to aid to their count. Like the seven others who were already gone. _Like Mae._

_Oh my god._

_“Come on.”_ With surprising strength, bird boy snagged Lori by the strap of her bookbag and practically dragged her out of her internalized daze amidst the empty clearing. For the first time since she met him, Germ seemed motivated by something recognizable: fear. Likely of the cult he’d just mentioned. Yet seeing his fear only escalated Lori’s own, giving her fears something to stand on and making the possibility that there really was a group of cultists scaling the wooded hill behind them seem all the more possible. And in turn the rodent did what she always did in the face of suffocating anxiety:

She panicked.

It was thanks only to Germ that they made it into the bushes by the edge of the clearing. Yet even as the staggered themselves behind the thick brush, the voices of those who’d followed them pierced the night air.

“It should be here.” A high-pitched voice, which Lori quickly identified as a girl’s, was the first to reach her ears. “Like, somewhere. I just don’t… see it.”

Beside her, Germ’s shoulders slumped and all tension relaxed. He recognized the fox’s voice, and immediately realized they were in no danger of a cult. The bird turned to face the mouse in order to share the good news, so that they might step out of the bushes and introduce themselves to Gregg’s group.

He found her in the middle of a panic attack, trying desperately not to break out into loud wheezing and alert the newcomers.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Germ whispered reassuringly. Even he was surprised by the mouse’s sudden shift, but he supposed it was hardly unfounded. The threat of being snatched by cult was severely worrying. “It’s just Gregg and the others.” Lori remained unresponsive, with eyes shut, and arms pulled tight against her chest. “It’s not the cult,” the bird tried again, with the same lackluster results. “We’re all set.”

When none of it seemed to be working, he took another glance towards those in the clearing and found Gregg, Bea, and Angus examining the well, very much in the same way Lori and himself had a few minutes before. Germ turned his attention back towards the rapidly unraveling mouse beside himself, and quickly decided that calming her was his number one priority.

“Remember the breathing trick?” He tried, with a hint of anxiety staining his normally single-toned voice. There weren’t many naturally rectangular objects for them to use in the middle of the woods. “Okay… how about you just try to… match my breathing, alright? I’ll start with an inhale–”

“A c-c-cult… In P-Possum Springs.” The mouse’s silence broke into a sentence of broken grammar and stammered pleas, high above the whisper-level voices Germ had been hoping to achieve. “Thought th-this was d-dangerous… didn’t t-think… c-cult.” Pained wheezes infiltrated the mouse’s speech without reserve, as Lori’s breathing fell desperately out of her control.

“What was that?” Germ heard Angus ask from the center of the clearing, and the revelation that they’d been recognized only served to worsen Lori’s attack. In a rare instance of losing his cool, the bird intentionally ignored the paranoid gazes thrown in their direction in the hopes of aiding the faltering mouse.

 _“In.”_ Germ commanded, taking a loud breath in the hope that he might prompt Lori to do the same. _“Out.”_ Nothing but the scratchy gasps of the rodent’s panic attack. Germ tried a bit more emphatically. “In.” A full five seconds, filling his lungs to their max capacity. A shaky attempt to mimic him was made by the mouse. “Out.”  Three seconds out, and Lori tried copying that too. “You’re doing great J–” Germ slipped into his habitual words of encouragement, but caught himself. “Just try to focus on holding the breath, okay Lori?”

The mouse nodded and words couldn’t express the relief the bird felt as control slowly came back to the mouse. The difference between this panic attack and the one that he’d treated before was that now, Lori genuinely thought this was a matter of life or death. And while it was partially Germ’s fault for instilling that unnecessary anxiety, the attack had surpassed the severity of their present situation which the bird had quickly learned wasn’t all that severe. The real issue was that the panic itself had become the problem.

Germ continued counseling the mouse, coaching her through additional breaths. Slowly, this gained back more and more control for Lori, but it also turned the bird’s attention completely away from the situation unfolding with Gregg and the others. _That’s fine._ They’d simply make themselves known when Lori was capable of breathing on her own.

A feat which would’ve been accomplished much sooner, had his three friends not descended on their hiding spot mob style, brandishing flashlights like weapons and spoiling the safe environment the bird had hoped to cultivate for the mouse.

It seemed that all their progress was for naught, as a foreign hand–Angus’, as Germ quickly recognized the brown shade of fur–reached out to part the bushes. A piercing screech echoed throughout the woods as Lori Meyers tumbled out the brush to the threesome’s feet, with Germ quickly following behind her in a hasty attempt to curb the ensuing confusion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Doesn't post a chapter in almost 2 months*  
> *New chapter is entirely about new characters and doesn't move past the ending of the previous chapter*  
> *New chapter is actually only the first half of chapter 4 that had to be split in half since it was getting really long*
> 
> I know. This is a little late. As in I missed the entire holiday season late (Hope you had a good Thanksgiving/Holidays/New Years'). Let's go into a list of reasons (excuses) for that:
> 
> 1) Despite the extensive planning I had for this fic, I severely overestimated (or rather underestimated) the word count (Dear god.)  
> 2) It took a few tries to get any Germ/Lori interaction to something I was happy with. Both of these characters are just... strange. And trying to introduce them and get used to writing them when they're the only ones in multiple scenes is not fun. (Although I do like the dynamic I have in mind for them).  
> 3) I cut out 2 scenes that were just really useless and didn't add much to the plot besides introucing a minor character (Lori's father). This was replaced with a single line of dialogue that tells you that some of his coworkers went missing as well. The only casualty of this decision was several hours of lost time (Oof).  
> 4) Smash bros came out.
> 
> Thankfully, the next chapter should be significantly simpler to write. (Don't believe me? You probably shouldn't.) As always, Thanks a ton for reading! If you would, please leave a comment telling me what you thought! I'd love to know what I'm doing right, and especially what I'm doing wrong! It really does help to get constructive criticism and encouragement from all you readers!


	5. The Clik Clak

In the wake of screaming, the ensuing silence seemed deafening.

The sudden hush rolled over both groups as they tried to figure out their next course of action. Not a stir in the wind, nor the rustling of undressed tree tops, could distract them from the thick wave of tension washing over them.

The response finally came from a certain blue crocodile; as she clutched her beating chest and wondered if the unexpected screech would send her spiraling into cardiac arrest, she voiced the trio’s sentiments in as eloquent a manner as any.

“Jesus, what the _fuck_ Germ?!”

Even without the beam of Angus’ flashlight (which the bear still clutched more as weapon than a utility), the moon shone upon the clearing and revealed the identity of the avian in question. By the bird’s side lie the culprit of the piercing scream, a young mouse girl who the reptile failed to recognize.

“Sup guys.” In the nonchalant manner that one came to expect from a creature like Germ, the bird acknowledged her unconventional greeting with his own. He gave them a small, subdued wave, yet the casual nature of the gesture belied the fact that he still lay sprawled across the forest floor.

“Why the hell were you spying on us, dude?” Even Gregg, having all the additional experience with Germ’s antics, seemed miffed by his latest appearance. Perhaps because they were all already on edge, coming back here in the woods where they’d first found the–

“Wasn’t spying.” Germ replied easily, as if the tension made readily apparent by the conversation was completely absent. In the same moment, the strange darkly-clad bird launched to his feet and dusted himself off. “Just got caught up in something.”

The trio exchanged glances. _Caught up in something?_ It was an explanation so vague it bordered on useless, only prompting more questions from the confused ensemble. At the very least, they could breathe a mutual sigh of relief knowing that their wannabe spies lurking in nearby shrubbery weren’t… well, whatever they most feared: surviving cult members, ready to finish what they’d started; a nosy search party, listening in on how they’d trapped nearly all the missing persons they were searching for in the mines right below them; or, in Gregg’s case, owls.

However, the revelation that the only people they upheaved from the poor hiding spot were two teenagers brought about other complications. Like the fact that the young mouse was currently bundled on the ground wheezing like a brass band.

“Hey, uh… guys?” Bumbling and hesitant, the bear fumbled with his words as if unsure that he should turn the group’s attention to the problem scrunched up feet away from them. Angus was torn between approaching the frail young mouse to comfort her and backing away to ensure that she didn’t feel threatened. Regardless of his internal dilemma, the desperate gasps of the rodent continued. “A little help… with this?”

“I’ve got it,” Germ quickly responded, and once more eyeballs fell to the enigmatic teenage bird. Angus took a step back as the avian assumed immediate control of the situation, prompting another series of questions to rattle off inside the trio’s mind as the center of attention turned to the unknown character in their midst.

The bear hovered tentatively between his two friends and the group now gathered on the ground. It wasn’t in his nature to sit around while someone was in some sort of danger, and the violent gasping coming from the girl didn’t exactly convey that _everything was A-Okay!_

“Is she having an asthma attack?” Angus innocently asked, watching as Germ began to guide the mouse’s breathing with his own steady pattern. “Because I’ve got my inhaler…”

“Nah Cap’n,” Gregg tugged his bear away from the situation easily enough. “That ain’t it.” It had started to dawn on the fox what was going on, which only made him feel worse that they had likely been the source of this panic attack, or at the very least, had startled the mouse enough to escalate it. Bea and Gregg shared a look of mutual guilt and shame for acidentally intimidating what seemed to be a middle schooler.

“Oh.” The realization struck Angus abruptly and the three young adults were forced to wallow in their thoughts and questions as the teenage bird resolved the situation, only making them feel infinitely more useless by the unconventional role swap.

“So…” Gregg quietly twirled his thumbs, trying to break the awkwardness of the situation with something resembling grace. “What are the chances the other search parties didn’t hear that scream?”

“Realistically?” Angus questioned, and the hopeful vulpine turned up to face his boyfriend. “None.” Any semblance of optimism faded.

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Gregg looked over and found the crocodile lighting a cigarette from the edge of her mouth _now,_ of all times. The transparent blue lighter sparked in her claws, igniting the end of a new stick, which Gregg recognized as the brand he’d tried that afternoon. The scent of smoke as Bea blew out reminded him of how it’d first tasted. _Yuck._ “I’m pretty sure even Mrs. Miranda heard that.”

“Who’s Mrs. Miranda?”

“Ugh, never mind.” Silence flowed naturally over the group as thoughts of work returned to crocodile, somehow managing to dampen the _oh-so-wonderful_ time she had been having.

It was Angus that spoke next, proving to be the voice of reason, as he so often was. “We should… leave, right?”

“Huh? Why?” Gregg didn’t seem to follow his line of logic.

“Unless we wanna attract attention to the caved in mines,” Bea spoke through the side of her mouth unhindered by a fuming cancer stick. “Angus is right.”

“Oh, yeah.” Dragging the search parties out to the mines where their missing persons lay trapped wasn’t exactly the kind of difference they’d been hoping to make tonight. As it was, the loud scream would’ve certainly attracted some unwanted attention. If the five of them remained, any line of questioning would certainly lead straight to those caves; at the very least, if they were able to disappear, any investigators might write it off as some kind of large animal and move on with their sweep of the surrounding woodland. “And what about them?” Gregg asked, nodding towards the screecher-in-question and her oddball companion.

“Guess they’ll come with us,” Bea replied offhandedly. Glancing over them now, it appeared the rodent had regained her composure. That transition from blind panic to a dull calm was an impressive and curious display of the bird’s set of skills. The big question of who the mouse was and what she was doing here still lingered over them all, but that hardly felt like the priority now.

“And how do you suppose we’ll do that?” Gregg questioned. “I can’t exactly imagine she trusts us very much since our only interaction is threatening her with a flashlight.”

Angus rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the brunt of the blame for that particular action. “Sorry…”

“Ain’t your fault Cap’n,” the fox answered back, smiling reassuringly as he pressed against the taller mammal’s side. The close contact simultaneously comforted and warmed the pair as the smaller vulpine snuggled against Angus’ soft fur. “Can’t blame you for wanting to protect your darling fox.”

“You two are something else.” Bea rolled her eyes, snorting in mock disgust. “Plus, you’re overcomplicating this.” Two sets of curious eyes prompted the crocodile to elaborate. “They’re kids. Well, I mean, she definitely is. Germ is… something else.” A puff of smoke drifted upwards and neither bear nor fox refuted the claim. “It ain’t gonna all that hard to get them to do what you want.”

“Okay, I’ll bite.” Angus glanced back over at the seated pair, who seemed content to sit and chatter quietly as possibly a quarter of Possum Springs marched down on them. “What exactly did you have in mind?”

Taking that as the signal that they were ready to go, Bea pulled the burning cigarette from her lips. “Hey kids!” The croc turned her attention to the pair in question, and found two set of expectant eyes trained back at her. Easily, she beckoned the mouse and Germ over with the same hand clutching the unfinished stick. “Come on. We’re going for a field trip.”

* * *

The promise of a warm meal and being anywhere else besides the middle of the woods was enough to lure the mouse after them. Which was… _worryingly_ low demands, considering how someone with less pure intentions could easily manipulate that trust. Unlike Gregg and his friends, whose goodness shone through their attempts to hide the incidental tomb of the town’s missing residents from the eyes of would-be rescuers.

 _9 times out of 10,_ Gregg admitted to himself, _we would probably be the bad guys in this situation._ He really hoped this was that 10%.

They arrived to their destination after a dozen minutes of trekking wordlessly through the woods, avoiding anything that even remotely sounded like approaching footsteps with lengthy detours. The dated residence of the Clik Clak, a remnant of a time long past when it was appropriate for diners to look like rail-cars and undergo infrequent health inspections, loomed before them as one of the few buildings left open at 9:30 on a Wednesday night.

 _God._ Gregg was left to once again marvel in the wonders of Possum Springs. _Our town sucks._ And yet there was no where else to go except inside; none of them five felt an urge to cook their own meal after a day like today.

They were by far the strangest clientele to walk into the Clik Clak all night–not that the small-town diner had ever been a popular destination during the workweek, and especially not when half the town was patrolling the woods in a hopeless search for a cat and a cult.

Like the setup of an elaborate bar joke, the gay bear marked their entry into the land of grease, followed by a decidedly more flamboyant fox, an overworked gator, a stoic bird, and a young mouse still clutching her schoolbag. Unfortunately, it seemed like the punchline had flopped, as nobody was laughing and after filing into their booth, the five-person table sounded about as entertained as a funeral reception.

 _Yep._ A full minute passed after ordering their food and the orange fox already felt restless. Beneath the table an ADHD-wrangled mind fidgeted with his feet as the squeamish Gregg tried his best not to accidentally kick the little girl sitting across from him. _This is awkward._ Why this whole situation _wouldn’t_ have been awkward eluded him, but the fox had at least expected this part to be easier than trying to talk to them in the middle of her panic attack. Instead the atmosphere felt just as suffocating.

 _Recap, Gregg._ The day felt like it’d been going on forever. Working himself through it seemed like the best course of action, if at least to internalize what had occurred. Plus, any distraction from _this_ was a welcome one. _All the missing person reports are in. The posters are up across town. Today’s been a precarious balance trying not to breakdown because of that, and now Mae has just… gone missing._ That had tipped Gregg over the edge, but he’d managed to hold it together for long enough to search the mines’ entrance. _We checked the cave-in and instead we find Germ with a child._ Seemed about right.

That was the elephant in the room: the mouse. She posed in interesting predicament to the older group, as they had no idea who she was, why she was here, or what Germ was doing with her. All that Gregg knew was that there was a very real possibility that she may have heard _something_ about the caved-in well–

“Is there really a cult?” The mouse girl piped up with a sudden explosion of bravery.

 _–never mind I guess she knows everything._ Gregg and Bea took turns looking surprised by the mouse’s unanticipated comprehension of the situation and leveling glares at Germ, who seemed strangely fascinated with the elderly couple sitting a couple tables down, being the only other customers in the entire establishment. Angus just looked deflated.

“No offense kid, but we don’t know who you are.” Bea chewed on the end of her dummy cigarette, frustrated with the lack of nicotine in her fake. Sure, she wanted to curve the habit, but doing so amidst the stress of the last week had proved to be… taxing.

“Oh, uh…” Instinctively, the mouse looked toward the one member of the group she was familiar with, but Germ had tuned out the conversation, meaning he was in no place to make introductions. “It’s Lori. I’m–I’m Lori.” Her hand hovered midway between a wave and a handshake–the latter of which she determined to be too formal. “Lori Meyers.”

“Your Mae’s teenager friend.” Gregg realized a bit too loudly, drawing the group’s attention towards him and away from a relieved mouse. “The tracks girl!” The overexcited fox repeatedly snapped his fingers, searching for what else the cat had said about her. “You–uh…You’re the one…You–the metal dudes!” The group’s attention was back of “the tracks girl,” and Lori’s temporary relief was lost as she felt the eyes of the other customers and staff of the Clik Clak land on her. Beneath dark grey fur, her face flushed bright red.

“Uh… yeah. That’s me. With the metal dudes.”

The largest member and the group chimed in, “You know her, Bug?”

Gregg shook his head. “Nah. Just of her; Mae was talking to me about her before you guys showed up to band practice yesterday.” The group reinitiated their impromptu silence, until something else the feline said about the mouse occurred to him. “Wait. You’re fifteen?!”

“No–I mean, almost.” The mouse seemed a little overwhelmed, and that was fair. She _was_ talking to Gregg for her first time. Most people took several conversations or more to adjust the vulpine’s specific wavelength. “Fourteen now.” A pause. “…Why is that such a surprise?”

The fox fumbled for an answer. “I just meant, like, you didn’t seem like you, uh…”

“I’m short.” Lori guessed for him, well aware of her strikingly nonexistent height. She was familiar with other people commenting on it.

“…yeah.” Gregg scratched at the back of his neck. “But there’s nothing wrong with that!” He quickly added. “I’m short too! And Mae is like, even tinier!”

“You’re getting sidetracked, Gregg.” An unamused blue reptile called the fox back from the land of crippling social faux pas.

“Oh. Right.” They wanted to know why she’d been out in the woods, not why she had the height of a middle-schooler.

“Might be best to do a quick round of introductions.” The brown bear suggested, watching how lost the mouse seemed to be as the conversation flung from one of them to another. At least they all sat next to each other on the same booth, so Lori wasn’t turning to follow the speaker like a tennis match. “Plus, it’s only fair.”

“Alright.” The orange fox directly across from Lori–the talkative one, she noted–continued to speak for his friends. “I’m Gregg, and this lovely bear right here…” He turned to his left, scooting close and leaning on the largest mammal’s side. “Is Angus.” Without moving from his makeshift pillow, he nodded to the only remaining member of his trio. “Over here, we have–”

“Bea.” The croc made her own introduction.

“–and I suppose you’ve already met Germ.” The bird sharing the booth with the mouse finally turned back towards the conversation, either done with scanning the room’s décor or simply bored. “Which begs the question of what you two were doing out there in the first place.”

“I showed her the last place I’d seen Mae.” It was Germ that answered calmly, stealing the attention–and eyes–away from Lori. “Right by the well in my backyard.”

“Why do I have the feeling that isn’t the only thing you did?” If Bea sounded like she was frustrated, it was because she was. Excuse her, but the crocodile didn’t think it was appropriate for Germ to be dragging fifteen–or fourteen, or however old this girl was–year olds into a situation like this. Especially since Bea had only just escaped her teenage years, and even she was overwhelmed by the last week.

“She wanted to know why there wasn’t a well anymore.” Germ responded with an expression the croc could only describe as _blank._ Either he didn’t know why what he’d done could be considered wrong–a strong possibility for the odd avian–or he didn’t care. “So I told her I blew it up.”

“Why exactly did you feel the need to drag a fourteen-year-old out… there… in the first place?” Gregg interrupted, curious as to what logic had led Germ to such an action. “The middle of the woods ain’t exactly the hottest place to be.” Then again, the fox realized _he_ had already been out in those woods three times this week. Maybe it was the new hangout spot for problem children and murder friendly festivities.

“She’s Mae’s friend.” Germ used the title as if it were self-explanatory. “And Mae’s missing. So we’ve all got some questions.” If the mouse in question felt awkward being the subject of the group’s disagreement, it shone through her shrinking into her booth, trying desperately for the cushioning to absorb her and hide her away completely. “I just figured I could answer some of hers by bringing her up to speed.”

“What made you think _that_ was a good idea?!” Bea’s hushed shout sounded just loud enough to attract stares from the other table, but not loud enough to let them know what she was saying. _“She’s a kid.”_

“Come on, Bea.” Angus’ gruff voice rejoined the conversation after minutes of lurking. “She’s fourteen. Not some mindless toddler.” The bear had been watching the younger mouse out the corner of his eye, and had noticed the girl’s building frustration and despair as the croc discarded her as little more than a kid. As Angus spoke up for her, he noticed the rodent’s ears perk up excitedly.

The reptile locked eyes with the large bear, both shocked and upset to find her friend disagreeing with her. “You can’t seriously be siding with Germ on this.”

“…” Solemnly, he paused for a moment. “…I’m not.” In the booth opposite from him, mouse ears drooped disappointedly. “I’m saying that just because she’s younger than us doesn’t mean you’ve got to treat her like that.”

“Like what?” The crocodile asked, incredulously; Bea leveled another glare at the bear, as if daring him to say just _what_ she acting like. Angus kept his ground, staring right back at her in a rare moment of confrontation for the bear. Yet it was because those moments were so uncommon, and Bea so unprepared to argue with him, that she was forced to admit defeat.

“Fine.” The crocodile sighed, feeling the stress of a regular workday and the added stress of dealing with this all after discovering Mae’s disappearance begin to weigh on her. Just because the mouse girl sitting across from them had barely escaped from middle-school didn’t mean Bea should act like such a bitch. Yet it still certainly did not mean they should go blabbering on about everything that happened in those woods two nights before. “I… I need a breather.” Her body was practically demanding a cigarette now, and the crocodile was too weak-willed to deny her addiction when it offered her escape from this hellish situation. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Cool,” Gregg’s reply was pointless, as Bea was already halfway to the door by the time it left his lips. The fox turned to face his boyfriend only to find him backing away from the booth as well.

“I’m, uh, gonna hit the bathroom.” Angus offered apologetically. “I’ve kinda had to go since after work.”

“Sure–” The vulpine’s voice never reached the retreating bear, and Gregg sighed. Looking around, he couldn’t help but feel like his friends had left him babysitting: Germ was back to being lost in his own thoughts, and the mouse had failed receding all the way into the plastic cushioning for extra protection. The table was two bodies down and that was two people less for the fox to make conversation with. If only he had some food to occupy himself with, but the single chef manning the kitchen seemed to take their time preparing the two orders which had been demanded of him from the busy restaurant.

“So…” Lori broke the silence, surprisingly enough, and Gregg felt a need to listen to the anxious young mouse. Unfortunately, the unsuspecting fox walked into a minefield. “Why _did_ you guys have Germ blow up the well?”

* * *

Cool and warm mixed well, Bea decided.

Outside the stuffy retro diner, with no walls left to guard her, the crocodile suffered the wrath of a chilly autumn night. Then, a spark: a cigarette lit to fill her accommodating maw with the tendrils of hot smoke, complimenting the electric chills racing down her spine. Hot or cold, her body flushed with some sensation other than the burdensome feeling of dread that seemed permanently lodged in her skull as of late.

 _A dummy doesn’t quite do the trick._ When it came to stress, nothing relieved her more than a blast of nicotine infused ash. She smoked through the first one in under five minutes, and mindlessly reached for another.

“You know, I don’t think you’re supposed to go through those things like candy.”

Bea snorted at the fox, hardly needing to turn back to the diner’s cement platform to recognize the voice of her vulpine friend. “Ironic, considering who I got these from.”

“You got me there.” Gregg conceded, hopping down to ground level with the croc. “But you’ve already gone through like, half the pack since then.”

“So?” On the defensive, the reptile prepped herself for another disagreement, turning to face the other. Fortunately, the fox was just as out of the mood as Bea.

“Just… chill with those, okay?” Gregg leaned up against the wall of the repurposed rail cart. “Smoking through that many a day can’t be healthy.”

Bea’s response stuck to the back of her throat. She had half a mind to tell the mammal to back off; the other half knew he was speaking sense. Plus, if she smoked through the rest of them now, she’d have nothing to make it past her shift tomorrow. Blue claws retracted from the cigarette box and stashed the treasure in the pocket of her skirt. “I just… They help. With the stress.”

“…I get that.” Hell, Gregg had tried to use them expressly for that purpose just hours prior. “Believe me. I’m stressed too.”

There was a lot to be stressed about; for some reason, Bea thought that with everything that had happened, with all the additional anxieties that had begun to plague her life, the stress of her unique situation would replace the everyday stress she’d succumbed to for the past two years: she was wrong. Instead, she had two lists of worries.

Work. _The cult._ An understaffed store. _The missing persons._ Paying rent this month. _Mae._ Budgeting for food. _The search parties._ Electricity. _The police._ Cigarettes. _The cave-in._ Her father. _Dad._

“I just…” Bea clenched her fists, unable to voice her thoughts. It was all too much. Had _been_ too much, even before the news of Mae had reached her. She searched for the words to convey the feeling of a thousand worries, of a thousand anxieties racing through her skull. When that miserably failed, as one would expect, the crocodile decided to focus on just one. Dropping her hand to her sides, she let out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t get what Germ was thinking.”

“I don’t think any of us can know what Germ’s thinking,” Gregg replied honestly, and Bea had to admit there was some universal truth to the statement. _The enigmatic Germ._ Germ, who showed up for shitty band practices and hung out at Gregg’s apartment to play video games in spite of a murder cult; Germ, who invited fourteen-year-olds to the site where they’d buried said cult. “The question is… what do we do about it now?”

“There’s nothing to do,” Bea stated plainly. “The last thing we want to do is drag more people into this.”

“That’s true.” Against the siding of the old Clik Clak, Gregg looked up to the moon hanging overhead, craning his head towards the stars. “But it’s not that easy.”

“Why the hell wouldn’t it be–”

“She _knows_ , Bea.” Such a small, simple thing, yet it changed everything. “About the cult.” It wasn’t exactly like the mouse would forget all that cause they refused to explain a few things to her. Plus, there was still the wild card of Germ, who might just fill her in anyway–might even be doing so right now, for that fact.

“…fuck.” For once, Bea voiced Gregg’s own thoughts perfectly. The two stood before the Clik Clak silently, basking in the pale moonlight. To the outside observer, they looked like a casual sight; only they knew that their lives were falling apart.

The door of the 80’s style diner swung open, and two heads pivoted towards the bear who emerged; Angus grinned emptily, picking up on their mood easily enough. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Bea returned the greeting, watching as the bear leaned against the iron railing on the stairs. The three of them stood in wait, knowing that they had something to discuss: a seemingly unapproachable dilemma they had to solve, with only one dreaded solution appearing as acceptable.

It was Gregg that broke their internal dialogue; a soft giggle spread from vulpine lips that soon proved contagious.

“What?” Bea questioned. From his platform on high, on the steps above the rest, Angus smiled gently, enjoying his partner’s amusement, if only for the sake of enjoying something about their present situation.

“It’s nothing,” Gregg waved the question away amidst his light laughter. “Just that, you know… two weeks ago, the last time we were all out here, we found an arm.”

“So?” Forgive Bea for questioning him, but severed limbs didn’t seem like the height of comedy to the crocodile.

“We pretty much brushed it off like it was nothing,” Gregg elaborated. “I mean, looking back, it should’ve been some real warning signs, but… we hardly took it seriously.”

“ _You and Mae_ hardly took that seriously,” Bea corrected, yet she too couldn’t help but be entertained by the thought. It sure said something about their current state of affairs that she felt nostalgic for the days when an amputated arm was the worst of their problems. “I specifically remember telling you two not to mess with it.”

“Yeah, yeah, Officer Santello. Whatever you say.” Bea snorted and the other two mammals smiled, but that was the end of it; their banter fizzled out just as it begun, nosediving off a cliff back into the solemn silence that reclaimed them.

 _This doesn’t feel right._ They all knew it, yet none dared to voice why. Something about the conversation just felt off, like every gap in discussion was them waiting for something that would never be heard–or someone who had been plucked from the group just as it’d opened up to accommodate them.

“You know… there’s nothing keeping us from just going home.” Angus joked, coaxing a smile out from his friends. “Could just bail on this whole operation now and hope it works out.”

“I would laugh if it didn’t sound so tempting,” Bea answered, imagining the two teens seated at the table as they spoke. She sighed defeatedly, turning the conversation where none of them wanted to be. “But we’ve got to deal with this, don’t we?”

“Yeah.” The lightheartedness in Gregg’s chest faded away as the smile fell from his lips. “We do, don’t we?”

* * *

“They’re taking an awfully long time, right?” The mouse peered over the back of her seat toward the diner’s entrance, desperately seeking a sign of the group’s return.

“Nah,” Germ responded simply. “Food here usually takes about this long.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Rolling her eyes, Lori wasn’t even really sure whether Germ had been making a joke. The mouse defeatedly slumped back into her booth, deciding just to wait Mae’s friends and the pizza out. It was probably easier than turning to glare back at the door every thirty seconds.

This whole situation was uncomfortable: Lori sat beside the odd little bird she’d only just met today, who’d helped her through two panic attacks and lured her into the woods with promises of information about Mae. The group of Germ’s older friends, who’d stumbled upon them at that same spot in the woods, were all outside, supposedly deciding the rodent’s fate. And through this all, the mouse had at her side her black bookbag, a constant reminder that she had yet to be home all day.

 _Hopefully Dad didn’t file a report for me, too._ It’s be real humiliating to become another poster around town all because she’d been distractedly pulled through a number of events.

“You think they may have ditched us?” It wouldn’t surprise the young rodent. They didn’t exactly seem very open to the idea of involving a fourteen-year-old in whatever it was they were doing. Especially the crocodile.

“Nah,” Germ answered again. “Gregg won’t leave without some pizza first.”

“Okay.” Somehow, that alone was enough reassurance for the mouse. With one question down, Lori searched for another on the long list she had acquired, making the most of the opportunity presented to her. “…Germ?” The avian hummed, a clear sign of acknowledgement; Lori took it as encouragement to continue. “…Why _did_ you show me the blown-up well?”

“Already said why,” the bird answered simply, repeating his reply from before. “You’re a friend of Mae’s. You’re just as concerned with what happened to her as the rest of us.”

“Yeah, but… still.” Lori couldn’t help but shake the feeling there was more to it than that. “…That’s it?”

This time, the avian took a moment to pause, as if meticulously screening and rephrasing a new response. Indeed, the bird’s new answer was a significant departure from the last. “You remind me of someone I used to know. I like to help people that I know.”

Apparently, Germ was practiced in the art of vaguely defined answers. It was just enough to sate her knowledge for the time being whilst hardly giving much of an answer at all. Yet before she could ask the avian to elaborate, or to dive into another of her many lurking questions, the other three-fifths of the table made their return.

They looked worn, like they’d returned from a session of jury duty, deliberating their case for many hours. As they filed into the bench, Lori fell silent, made mute by the suspense. In their exhaustion, they wore their emotions on their sleeves; Bea was annoyed, Angus, exasperated, and Gregg, anxious. But above all else the group seemed utterly uncertain. As if every minute, they were second guessing themselves.

The bear began with a question. “Exactly how much did Germ tell you?” Cautiously suspicious, he prodded the rodent for a more thorough understanding. Behind thick glass lenses, brown eyes flicked over to the avian in question, pondering exactly how much even Germ knew about the situation. Beyond them three and Mae, the bird knew the most about this last week, but even he must not have caught everything.

It took a moment for the mouse to register the question; it took another for her to hurl a panicked answer out. “Just about the cult.” Three pairs of eyes trained on Lori, prompting her to stutter out an addition. “They–they chased Mae into the ravine when she got her head injury.” _More._ Their collective gazes seemed to say. “It’s… they’re the reason Mae had Germ blow up the well.” _More._ Lori reached for it, and the cat’s phrasing popped into her head. “A death cult of conservative uncles.” _More._ They demanded. But Lori didn’t know any more. She hardly even knew that, from the snippets she’d gleaned from Mae on the rooftops and Germ out by the well before the trio’s arrival. _More._ Their attentions hungered, nevertheless. “And–and… And they’re responsible for all the missing persons around town.” With one important distinction. “Except Mae’s.”

But the looks on their faces told a different story, that Lori didn’t quite get that all right. Before the rodent had an opportunity to guess again, or any of the other three could brush the topic aside, Germ interrupted them both.

“No,” the bird corrected, unfazed by the panicked looks thrown his way. “The cult didn’t cause the disappearances.” Germ, who’d only witnessed the bits and pieces of the gang’s murder cult adventure, knew enough to say that. And unfortunately for Gregg, Bea, and Angus, he was going to. “Cause the cult are the disappearances, aren’t they?”

The bird’s words were enough to dash the trio’s hopes of keeping the teenage girl in the dark. They were also enough to get the young rodent thinking, which meant their intentions to gauge Lori’s knowledge of the situation and act accordingly had swiftly shifted to damage control and shut Germ the hell up.

“I… I don’t understand.” Lori propped her elbows on the table and massaged her temple. If anything, it seemed like a shoo-in that a cult of murderers acting in secrecy out in the woods would be responsible for sudden vanishings.

Across from her, two mammals and a reptile anxiously exchanged looks of dreadful acceptance. They broke from silent discussion and turned back to the teenagers, levelling fierce glares at an unapologetic Germ before releasing their anger in order to best deal with the confused mouse.

“Look.” The fox spoke hesitantly; with every word that tumbled from his jaw, he tossed desperate glances to either side, as if pleading for Bea or Angus to interrupt him with a better idea. In the absence of an alternative, Gregg continued on reluctantly. “If you two can promise a few things, and _someone_ can quit blabbering–” A pointed glare told the teens the fox had a certain bird in mind. “We’ll... tell you. About what happened to Mae. To all of us.” _Not that they had much choice at this point_ , the three of them had decided. The more Germ told Lori, the more incriminating evidence she was left with.  And whereas Gregg knew the bird would never go to the cops on them… he knew absolutely nothing about this fourteen-year-old rodent.

“…promise what?” The mouse questioned cautiously. The trio across the table sat silently, trying to work out their demands.

“You can’t tell anyone else about this.” The fox felt that one was a given. “Not your family, not your friends at school: nobody.”

“No cave-diving.” The bear added, and the mouse only furrowed her eyebrows at the highly specific requirement.

“No police.” The crocodile finished icily. It was the only rule that gave the rodent pause, and made her really question what she might be getting herself into.

“Deal?” The three waited patiently for an answer.

“Sure.” Germ’s answer came easily for the bird, as if the promise were something as inconsequential as a dollar store purchase. The mouse elected to be more selective with her own.

“Lori?” Gregg asked gently, arms propped forth on the table. He kept his eyes locked on the mouse, and for once, Lori held his gaze. This was something too important to write away as a simple deal. If it were big enough that cops could get involved, she’d need to decide if it was worth the risk. And yet… the calling to know what had happened to Mae– _to all of Possum Springs_ –was too great to ignore.

“Do we have deal?”

* * *

By the time the story ran its course, the pizza sat at an off-putting lukewarm, and their appetites spoiled. That is, all their appetites save for Germ, who happily feasted on his third piece as the rest of the pie lay untouched. Lori sat motionless, internalizing the abundance of new information presented to her, while Gregg and his friends anxiously awaited some sort of reaction from the young mouse, all the while toiling with a sudden influx of those emotions associated with an event they so desperately hoped to forget.

From Mae’s first encounter at Harfest to their victorious emergence from the mines two nights prior, they pretty much filled the teens in on everything regarding the cult, opening Lori’s eyes to the entire thing while filling in the gaps in Germ’s knowledge. Lacking the proper response, they couldn’t decide whether that had been a good thing.

So they sat. Silently, over cold pizza and seated in the empty Clik Clak, they racked their minds, trying to sort out everything they’d learned or relived.

It only seemed logical that Germ was the first one done.

“Okay,” the dark blue avian chirped away after finishing his slice of pizza. Now, it was Lori’s turn to scowl at Germ, because _okay_ didn’t really cut it after what she’d heard. _Okay_ wasn’t exactly the first response to come to mind for the young rodent; instead, she wanted to be sick.

 _God._ She felt physically ill after hearing it all. Sickeningly, the second promise extracted from her prior to the retelling made a lot more sense to the rodent; the bear, fox, and crocodile sitting across from her had already done their fair share of cave-diving into the lair of… _what?_ _A demon? A god? A false prophet, a figment of a cult’s overeager minds?_

“Oh my god.” Shaky breath and broken voice, the mouse called out in her own reply, noticeably less collected than the bird’s. _“Oh god…”_   Sympathetic looks were all the comfort Lori received from the other booth; words lay left unsaid, spared for the moment.

This was fucked up. _Like Cabin in the Woods levels of fucked up._ Except this wasn’t some horror movie; this was real, and right here in Possum Springs. _A cult of actual killers–_ whose actions had already rung through the confines of Possum Springs for God knows how long. They had killed that other cat, when Lori had been so confident that he had hopped a train…

A cult, kidnapping kids at Harfest; lurking in the caves of long abandoned mines; operating in the woods under the cover of night; sacrificing lives to a glorified hole.

Trapped beneath the surface.

 _And why’d they do it?_ As some self-proclaimed salvation for their shitty rural town? Possum Springs wasn’t worth the space it occupied; never mind the lives it stole.

“This is all kinds of messed up.” The mouse murmured. They others hummed in agreement, hardly shifting from their positions: Bea, leaned back, eyes closed and elbow propped against the table, mind lost in thought; Gregg, who’d done must of the storytelling, slumped against the wooden slab, inches away from  the greasy pizza but decidedly not entertained by the thought of eating; and Angus, with a comforting hand resting on the fox’s shoulder as he calmed his drained boyfriend.

“We… didn’t mean to trap them.” A sullen Gregg tried to justify, even though he distinctly remembered them telling Germ to blast the well’s secondary entrance to the mines to kingdom come. “It was self-defense.” Another excuse, just as flimsy, left Gregg just as dirty on the inside.

“…does it matter?” she asked quietly.

“…I don’t know.” The fox fell deeper into despair. The others only fell further into silence: for the first time since the incident, they were forced to really ponder the implications of what they’d done–of what they were continuing to do, by sitting idly as the town searched for lost souls to save. They couldn’t avoid the topic, or occupy themselves with some other task, because they’d been forced to lay it all out before them: forced to question whether what they’d done had any moral backing.

“…I think it does.” Angus whispered. “We didn’t want to do what we did. But... I’m not saying I regret it.” The bear hoped this made sense to the younger mammal, and that he didn’t just sound like a psychopath. “They got what they deserved. What they were doing… couldn’t be allowed to continue.”

The quiet returned and the mouse was left with more thoughts to mull over. Just when it seemed like they’d be doing this back and forth all night, a single word sounded from the other’s lips.

“…Okay.” The word echoed emptily from the young girl’s mouth, reflecting an unenthusiastic sanctioning of what had been done.

Had the trio expected the acceptance of a fourteen-year-old to unchain their personal reservations regarding this question of ethics, they would be sorely disappointed; the only gratification they could enjoy was the reasonable assurance that Lori wouldn’t turn around and report them to the cops. It took a bit more to draw that two-syllable word out of the rodent than from the bird, but it ultimately left them in the same place. Now, the teens knew everything; whether that would be a mistake, only time would tell. Yet for now, they were left with the same problem they’d began with.

“If that’s all true… then what does that mean about Mae?” Lori questioned. Reptilian eyes crossed with the bear’s, just as vulpine orbs joined the fray.

“Nothing, I suppose.” Angus admitted. “Or possibly everything.” The mouse opened her mouth, prepared to speak.

“We don’t know where Mae is.” Bea foresaw the other’s question. “Just that as of last night, she disappeared from her ransacked bedroom and no one’s seen her since.”

“We checked the entrances to the mines because…” Gregg bit his lower lip. “We worried Mae might have gone back there.”

“You had me blow up the well.” Germ reminded the fox. “You don’t trust my handiwork?”

“It’s not that.” The fox paused for a moment, finding the best way to word it. “Just that a few pieces of rubble aren’t enough to stop a stubborn Mae.”

“Why would she want to go back there?” Lori questioned. “Shouldn’t she be, like, the most traumatized of any of you?”

“You forget this is Mae we’re talking about,” the crocodile commented snidely. “Stubborn, reckless, and utterly unpredictable Mae.”

The other’s bitter criticism surprised the mouse. “But–”

“But we all love her and want to find her desperately,” Gregg clarified.

“Naturally.” Bea nodded.

“So… what’s your plan?” Lori prodded. Visible confusion from the others led her to explain. “Where are you looking to find her?”

The silent exchange through stares which had become so prominent throughout the night made another appearance, before Gregg hesitantly spoke once more. “We don’t… know?”

“We just learned about her disappearance a few hours ago,” the bear explained. They’d spent those few hours joining search parties, combing the woods, scaring fourteen-year-old mice and explaining their last few days to teenagers inside the Clik Clak. A strong start, but definitely some sidetracking towards the end there.

“Can… can I help?” The mouse asked timidly.

“Uh… sure.” Gregg decided that searching for Mae was markedly less dangerous than anything they’d already told the mouse about, and another pair of eyes could go a long way. “Germ? You in?”

“Yep.” He chirped easily through a mouthful of melted cheese and oily crust. At some point in their conversation, the bird had taken the opportunity to sneak a fourth slice into his gullet: an appalling display of eating half the pizza, but impressive nevertheless.

“Cool.” The fox figured they had a good team here. Nice and, uh… diverse. Now they just needed a plan of attack.

“We can probably avoid the woods for now.” Angus seemed to pick up on his boyfriend’s hesitation. The bear took it as his signal to contribute. “The search parties have pretty much got that covered.”

“What does that leave?” Gregg asked. “Not exactly like Mae’s hanging around town proper in plain sight.”

A certain mouse’s pupils lit up in inspiration. “The rooftops.”

“Huh?”

“Nobody’s checking the roofs.” Lori elaborated. “If Mae’s anywhere nearby, she could be right above us.”

“…she does like being up on those telephone lines.” Bea corroborated. “Unfortunately, none of us are practiced in that same skill.”

“Speak for yourself, women,” Gregg replied happily. “I’ll have you know I could go toe to toe with Mae’s climbing skills.”

“Bug…” Angus warned. Not that he meant to impede on their investigation of Mae’s disappearance, but seeing his fox in the hospital was not something he wanted to look forward to.

“I’ll be careful,” he promised his boyfriend, but the worried furrow of the bear’s eyebrows reflected the doubts he still harbored.

“I can go, too.” Lori volunteered. The others’ heads swung towards her and she felt a sudden need to explain. “I practically live on the rooftops anyways.”

“The more the merrier.” Gregg’s head turned to the bird beside Lori. “What do you say Germ?”

“Eh.” The avian shrugged off the invitation. “I’m gonna ask around with the Crusties. You two can probably cover the roofs in town easily enough.”

“Alright.” Lori wasn’t sure how to feel about being partnered up with just the fox. Then again, everyone here was new to her; friends of a friend who’d she been drawn to by extreme circumstances. Had her mom been alive, she would’ve been thrilled by the social aspect of it all. “Tomorrow’s Thursday. Can I join you after school?”

“Just stop by the Snack Falcon,” Gregg instructed. “I should be just finishing up my shift anyway.”

“Actually finishing up, or just deciding to close shop?” Angus lifted an eyebrow suspiciously.

“You’ll feel better if I don’t tell you.” The bear sighed: that was confirmation enough. He would usually fight Gregg about stuff like this, but… _he knew._ Knew just how badly Gregg _needed_ to find Mae; knew just how horribly his fox needed to know his best friend was okay after failing to do the same with Casey.

“I suppose those of us with actual jobs can’t help out much, huh?” Bea commented dejectedly. “Not exactly like I can skip out on work early.”

“Me neither.” Angus–the responsible half of his partnership–seemed just as bothered. “Best I can do is ask around when people come into the store.” The crocodile hummed in agreement, and with that, a decisive plan seemed to rise from nothing.

“Meetup at the apartment afterwards?” Gregg proposed.

“As long as you’re offering.” The crocodile wondered how many times she’d end up on the couple’s couch by the end of this week.

“You know, you’ve got an apartment too.”

Mock shock claimed the croc’s face. “Really? You’ll have to show it to me sometime.”

“Are we done here?” Germ stood without warning. “Cause it sounds like we’re done.”

“Yeah.” Gregg looked around the hollow cavern that was the Clik Clak. Every table, wiped down and unoccupied, save for theirs in the center of the room. The few staff remaining lurked near the kitchen door, completely uninterested in anything except for when they could go home.

“Cool.” Germ turned to leave. “See you later.” The others figured a goodbye would be wasted on the bird.

Gregg and Angus were the next to stand. “I… uh. Didn’t bring my wallet.” The bear admitted guiltily. Somehow, he’d failed to predict that joining the search parties would end in a dinner at the Clik Clak. “If you need, I can go to the apartment and grab–”

“Don’t worry about it,” Bea brushed her friend’s offer off. “It’s just one pizza. Plus, this means I get to bring the rest home for my dad without feeling guilty.” The untouched half of their food still looked dreadfully unappetizing to the croc and her friends.

“Alright. Thanks Bea.” The bear and his fox shuffled out the diner, leaving Bea alone with a conspicuously uncomfortable mouse. Lori twitched and fidgeted, while the crocodile did her best to ignore the young rodent until she left.

But she didn’t leave. Not when Bea paid the bill. Not when the waitress collected it nor when the croc left the appropriate tip. Not even as she stuffed the four slices of greasy pizza into the squeaky Styrofoam container.

Finally, ignoring it kinda became pointless, only making the inevitable exchange between the two of them all the more awkward. Breathing deeply, Bea prepared herself before turning to face the other. “What’s up, kiddo?”

A flustered Lori looked down as she played nervously with the hands in her lap. Apparently, the crocodile intimidated her. “…I don’t suppose you have a car?” Big, mousey eyes made brief contact with Bea’s own despite the tension laced in Lori’s voice. “I kinda live on the other side of town, and I’m sure my dad’s already freaking about me being out so late on a school night…”

 _Goddamn it._ The last thing Bea wanted to be doing right now was chauffeuring the mouse back to her house. But there wasn’t exactly much to justify ditching the fourteen-year-old and forcing her to walk home through the cold autumn night.

* * *

After the fourth ad play of the same irritating mattress salesman, a frustrated Bea was forced to admit defeat and abandon the dial in favor of powering the entire receiver off. Reluctantly, the crocodile had come to realize that the late-night drive would offer no silver lining in the form of public radio.

Bea herself had neither the energy nor willpower to force any conversation that might fill the void inside the empty metal shell. The drive to the young mouse’s home seemed doomed to wallow in a tense silence, though not for the fourteen-year-old’s lack of trying.

“You’ve, uh… got a nice car,” Lori fumbled out the compliment, clearly unnerved by the wordless crocodile.

“Yep.” Bea brushed aside the other’s attempt with a single breath.

“It… uh… it really goes.”

“…Yep.” The crocodile wouldn’t mind being _literally_ anywhere else. Already, her mind had escaped to the distant fantasy of another 10-hour shift the next day. “It sure does.” Audibly, one could hear the sound of a young rodent drowning in the embarrassing failure of her attempt at conversation.

It wasn’t that Bea _disliked_ the fourteen-year-old. After all, Lori hadn’t really done anything wrong: it was Germ, who’d dragged another of Mae’s friends into this whole affair, but that didn’t mean the teenage mouse who wheedled her way into their problems was spared from the reptile’s wrath. Now, Bea and her friends were forced to deal with hormonal preteens in addition to the spiraling tower of intricacies already amassed.

It was bullshit: another complication, completely outside their control. Which was exactly why the crocodile was so infuriated by it. When they should have been focusing on the actual problems, like the cult, or Mae, or the dozens of people searching the woods, closing in on the site of the crime, they’d taken the night to explain the situation to a high schooler. To Bea, whether Lori had been a friend of Mae’s or not seemed irrelevant. Germ never should have involved her.

“L-left here, please.” Bound by the mouse’s word, the reptile guided the car down a side street, claiming the barren cement way as its own. Headlights fell upon on the next intersection, and Bea’s car crept to a halt under the watchful eye of a red octagon. The crocodile took advantage of the stop sign as she absentmindedly dug around her skirt pockets. Producing a half-empty box, Bea figured that the opportunity to relieve some stress amid the awkward drive through the Possum Springs backroads was well deserved.

“Do you mind?” The reptile flashed the open case towards the minor. Lori shook her head.

“N-no,” she stuttered, watching Bea withdraw a single cigarette from the container. “It’s your car, after all.” The croc traded the box for the lighter in her pocket. Tilting her head down, she brought it to the stick perched between her lips, igniting it from the white end. “Not like I’m allergic or anything.”

The crocodile snorted, letting the smoke escape out her nostrils. “Never heard of someone allergic to smoking.” The car drifted back into motion, continuing on its way as it passed the crossing.

In the passage seat beside her, Bea caught the other’s curious whisper. “…isn’t Mae?”

A perplexed crocodile couldn’t help but reply. “…What?” The mouse flinched from the question.

“I-It’s just…” A cautious Lori stared down at her fingers, uncertain if she’d said something wrong. “When I told Mae about how I used to smoke, she talked about being allergic.”

Although still firmly in control behind the wheel, Bea’s mind froze for a second. _Mae’s actually allergic to cigarettes?_ The cat had definitely never mentioned that–then again, Bea had picked up the habit during that odd, seven-year period when they’d stopped acknowledging each other’s existence. And since the cat had returned, they’d been occupied with other things. _Still._ The crocodile’s eyebrows remained knit in confusion. _Why wouldn’t Mae say anything about it?_

“Wait.” Only now was the other part of the mouse’s explanation reaching the reptile. “You smoke?”

“I, uh… used to.” The fourteen-year-old obviously struggled to hide her embarrassment as the conversation shifted to herself. “Once.”

“…You’re too young for this shit.” Once again, that obvious hypocrisy that Bea had felt when she’d told Gregg very much the same thing came rushing back. Only this time, the situation was made all the more absurd by the lit cigarette perched between her fingers as she exhaled another lethal dose of smoke through the open window.

“I was twelve.” The car turned, following the slow bend of the road.

“That’s too young.” _No age is good,_ Bea wanted to add, but the idea of lecturing the other felt a bit too preachy. After all, Lori had tried it once while she was twelve; Bea had bought into it when she was eighteen and never looked back.

“I, uh… had some family problems,” the mouse added. “There was stuff going on with my mom and I just felt… really upset. So I did a lot of stupid shit to make it seem better.”

The crocodile behind the wheel was silent. Despite the pause she’d taken from her cigarette, her throat still felt abnormally dry. After a minute of silence as her car gently coasted along the empty road, Bea realized it was her turn to talk. With a violent cough, she shook the coarse feeling from her throat. “It’s, uh… it’s good. Good that you snapped out of that.”

“…Sorry.” The mouse couldn’t stifle the strained, awkward laughter as she realized she’d effectively killed the conversation through oversharing. “I, uh… I didn’t mean…” Lori hung her head, accepting defeat. “Sorry.” The sympathetic crocodile forced an empty smile as the car came to another stop. “Another left,” the mouse instructed, and Bea turned onto the lightless Chestnut Street, careful to navigate the pothole ridden pavement.

“Is your mom… alright?” The crocodile asked the question halfheartedly, feeling curious, anxious, and hopeful, all at once.

“…no.” Bea cringed from the all too familiar sound of painful acceptance. “She passed away.”

“Oh.” It wasn’t too often that the reptile found herself on the other side of this conversation. At least now, she could attest that the topic was uncomfortable for all those involved. “I’m sorry.” The genuine empathy she expressed was a far cry from how the crocodile had treated the mouse the rest of night.

“It’s fine.” Lori looked up and scanned the houses on her side. “Mine’s next on the right.”

“Okay,” the still dry voice of the reptile answered. Her eyes landed on 47 Chestnut Street, taking in the single floor residence of the Meyers family. The car slowed to a standstill, creeping towards a stillness by the mouse’s driveway. “I guess I’ll see you later kiddo.”

“Thanks.” It felt strange, ending the rickety conversation of paralyzing grief and unhealthy coping mechanisms so suddenly. Yet Bea had the feeling that dragging the mouse back into her seat to share the crocodile’s own story of dead moms and bad habits wouldn’t translate all too well. The side door clicked open and Lori began to hop out; the first foot hit the pavement and the mouse suddenly stopped, turning back to the driver. “We’re, uh, gonna meet up at Gregg and Angus’ apartment tomorrow, right?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Do… do you mind giving me a ride home again afterwards?” A pause, and then the mouse quickly doubled back, projecting her characteristic self-consciousness. “N-not that I mean to impose or anything. I… I can just walk tomorrow, if you’d prefer.” In her words’ desperate attempt to get out from over themselves, the mouse’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I-it’s no big deal…”

It really only took a moment for the crocodile to decide; had Lori tried scheduling further ride-alongs with the scaly blue reptile at the Clik Clak, Bea most certainly would’ve told her to take a hike. Now…

“Sure.” Relief flooded the mouse’s eyes and the crocodile managed to subdue an amused snort. “Like you said. No big deal.”

“Cool.” Lori jumped the rest of the way out of the car. “Thanks, Bea.”

“Don’t mention it.” The door slammed and the mouse headed for her front door with a black bookbag slung over her shoulder, preparing a lengthy explanation to her father about why she’d been out till 11:30 on a school night. From the car parked outside her driveway, a wispy trail of cigarette smoke escaped the driver-side window, as the blue croc inside pondered the fourteen-year-old she’d just become acquainted with.

They were… similar. At the very least, there were some significant parallels between her and Lori’s life journeys. _Maybe Mae’s trying to replace me._ Bea chuckled reservedly as she pulled out of park and maneuvered her vehicle through a U-turn to face back the way she came. Driving down Chestnut Street, the croc once again came to a stop by the first intersection.

 _Guess I missed my chance for Ham Panther, huh?_ It was with some sadness that Bea remembered the promise she’d made to herself that morning to go grocery shopping and restock the empty cupboards of their kitchen. All she had to bring home for her father tonight were four slabs of greasy diner pizza, and a new source of worries for herself.

Bea’s cigarette danced precariously between her fingers as she brought it to her lips. Propping her elbow up on the open window, she held the toxic gas within her maw as her eyes scanned the cloudless night sky. Hanging above Possum Springs was an infinite expanse of burning stars, each one light-years away from their dead-end town and much brighter than their prospective futures.

Yet now, for some reason, she could only taste the bitter juices of the tobacco and worry how the full moon might aid the search parties ensnaring the town; nevertheless, as her latest trail of smoke reached upward for those distant lights, Bea’s eyes couldn’t help but follow them, posing a question only the omnipotent sky itself seemed capable of answering.

"Where are you, Borowski?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who's back after a month and a half? (Even I can't predict my update schedule.)
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed the newest chapter of TKoPS. I'm really excited about how's its coming along, even if there may be multi-month long gaps between these uploads. With the conclusion of this chapter, this marks a significant turning point from the opening chapters to a greater emphasis on "the search." The core cast of characters have been established, and I'm really trying to create unique relationships between them to make each interaction feel natural. 
> 
> As always, I appreciate everyone who leaves a comment to tell me what they think about the fic. I, like every other author, enjoy hearing about what you enjoy, but I also look forward to constructive criticism as well!
> 
> Until next time!


	6. The Eye of the Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Possum Springs' disappearances are too colossal an event for anyone in town to ignore. With proper investigations underway, both the police force and Mae's friends are left grasping at straws in the search, yet without proper leads or evidence, it is nevertheless a painstaking expedition for them both.

Deep Hollow County was no stranger to the whims of disaster.

Since its founding, it’d been plagued by paralyzing labor strikes and government approved massacre; in more recent years, the bloody battles of class warfare had fallen to the wayside as floods and storms ransacked the region. Although events distributed themselves across the decades, it seemed the valley found itself poised on the precipice of pandemonium every dozen or so years.

Yet despite that, Possum Springs and its neighboring communities demonstrated an uncontested easiness that one would not come to expect from an area constantly flirting with the threat of complete annihilation. As if after every incident–in the wake of each possession-soaking flood or weeklong subzero snowfall–the residents, those victim to Deep Hollow County’s natural attraction to tragedy, slowly let the disaster fade from their mind, leaving the memory lost to the passage of time and remaining only as a passing anecdote.

Truly, in the center of so much chaos, between the brutal slaughtering of unionized miners and merciless natural disasters, the towns in the valley carried on entirely unfazed. Daily life in Possum Springs–or even Briddle and Saltztown–was eventless. Its residents were trapped in a thick haze, where moments seemed to blur into one long dull stretch. And even when they were in the clear, enjoying the safe minutes of respite between epidemics of new and old, they never seemed to see the walls of the next storm come crashing in on them, closing in on the peaceful eye in which their whole entire existence was situated.

Until the storm struck them in their very homes.

 _What does your life collapsing in around you sound like?_ Prior to these last two days, Candy Borowski could’ve settled on a dozen different answers: the rising water level as the flood climbed up to their house’s attic, claiming each domestic piece Stan and her had worked decades for; the violent sobs of her mourning daughter that same year when Mae’s grandfather passed, when the mother cat’s words bounced off from her kitten without offering the slightest bit of comfort; the other parents’ shrieking on the baseball field and the sickening smack and splat resonating from the pitcher’s mound; the financial advisor’s indifferent explanation of what their second mortgage truly meant for them. All her answers came in the form of those things most audible, and although distinct, each sound heralded the collapse of some aspect in the feline’s life.

But now, Candy found the most heart wrenching noise was the silence. The drop-of-a-pin quiet that made painstakingly clear that fact that everything she’d ever lost–that she’d ever worried about losing, or been warned that she would lose it–paled in comparison to this single blow.

Sitting on the splintered frame of her daughter’s bed, in a complete and utter stillness, a mother experienced her kind’s worst fear. And it was enough to shatter everything, leaving her destroyed within the walls of her own home despite the deceptive calm enshrouding the attic.

Because her daughter was gone.

Her Mae had disappeared, and all that remained of her for the brokenhearted mother to wallow in was the knife-like shards of an overturned mirror, the piles of abandoned clothes, old books, castaway boxes, and the shreds of childish posters which once graced her walls. Posters which had once exploded with personality–with _Mae’s_ personality–fell limp in their current state; boxes of clothes and books which Candy had taken secret pleasure in rifling through while her daughter was away at college, getting teary eyed in the nostalgic memorabilia of now too-small t-shirts and ancient school projects; the mirror which had once been Candy’s own, and had sat in the older cat’s bedroom when Mae used it to fix her outfit before her first day of junior high.

How is it that a room filled with so many memories could be defiled in a single night? _How is it that I can lose my daughter from inside this very house?_

She had considered cleaning it: replacing the posters with some spares Mae liked to swap them out with from in the closet, getting rid of the destroyed mirror, repairing the split bed frame, stowing away the scattered clothes back in their musty cardboard storage spaces. After all, Candy had already spent enough time in the room to have accomplished a number of those tasks. Yet rather than spend that time productively, she’d moped in a single spot, intentionally trapping herself amid the chaos of what had been her daughter’s room.

 _I need to clean up eventually,_ Candy told herself. _For when Mae comes back._ And that “when” was intentional, because her little kitten _would_ be coming home.

A strong gust of wind blew across the cat’s back, rolling down the fabric of her nightgown and sending shivers down Mrs. Borowski’s spine. Candy threw a glance over her shoulder towards the circular window behind her: the open crack, as the glass was rotated away from its frame, allowed the frigid autumn air to accompany the shining rays of early morning light into the room.

 _Already?_ Candy recoiled. Perhaps she’d been sitting on this shattered bedframe for longer than she’d thought. If she wanted to make it into work today, she’d need to start her morning routine. _Breakfast, shower, clothes…_

Standing up, she turned to shut the window, locking the circular panel back in its frame and sealing away the chilly breeze. The room still felt just as cool; she probably should’ve realized it was open sooner. Staring out the glass, her eyes hovered over the spot where the sun would be rising in just a short few minutes, marking the dawn of a new day on Possum Springs.

_I ought to get going._

And yet, the promise of food and freshening up held no allure over her. Even the idea of emerging from this crevice in the attic of her home seemed unappealing. She and Stan still weren’t talking, and she frankly couldn’t see anything but another argument arising this early in the morning. Before the cat knew it, she was settling back down to the broken frame, gently reclaiming her place above the collapsed furniture.

 _Maybe… just a few more minutes,_ Candy promised, flattening her paws against the naked mattress her daughter slept on: if not last night, then the dozen nights before, and the nearly two decades prior to her daughter’s ill-fated college venture. Little pieces of her daughter seemed to jump out from amidst the destruction which surrounded Candy, and the middle-aged mother tried desperately to grab a hold of them.

She committed herself to taking in the scene just once more.

* * *

_Thursday, November 9 th_

The brown, leafless tree line of Possum Springs’ forest ensnared this winding dirt backroad, tracing its two sides like a chain-link fence and trapping the path between in its desperate attempt to reclaim the land repurposed for manmade intentions. The morning sunrays of a cloudless day were unhindered by the abundance of barren branches, easily passing through the skeletons of summertime foliage just so they might shine down on the monochrome vehicle traversing over the rough terrain.

The squad car rode steadily down the pothole-infested way, enjoying the brief interludes of smooth respite and rocking violently whenever it hit an especially large bump. This glorified driveway was narrow enough to qualify as a one-way, yet the town lacked the proper infrastructure to do so. As it stood, the driver only needed to hope that another car didn’t intend to share the road: squeezing by a passing vehicle had a very real chance of sending both their cars careening off the thin dirt strip and into the surrounding woodland. When the intended destination was reached, the car itself seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, drifting into the driveway of one of the community’s more isolated families.

In the front seat, the uniformed cat also sighed, though hers was drawn more from exhaustion than release. A single paw hovered over the keys, still left in ignition, before dropping to her lap emptyhanded. The purring of the engine continued from outside the car; inside the metal box, Officer Molly sat motionless.

Half a minute passed, and the feline forced a hand to lower the car’s sun visor. Sliding the plastic guard aside, she exposed the small mirror to the outside world, consequentially unveiling her reflection in the process. Heavy bags, sunken eyes, and tangled fur all seemed par for the course at this point: a sleepless two days tended to have that effect. The middle-aged officer hadn’t even been home since Tuesday morning, as the first reports had flooded in that very night. If the futileness of this investigation continued, it seemed likely that trend would too.

Two days of work, and all the local police had to show for it were the initial reports, mountains of paperwork, and a fruitless first search. _Course, that had been a longshot anyhow…_ yet the eventless nature of the search parties’ attempts was still discouraging. _All we picked up on was the howling of some coyote._ Not exactly the revelation Molly hoped for while investigating the disappearance of **seven** individuals.

 _Or at least, seven reported missing persons so far._ The officer considered herself a realist, and there was the very real possibility that the first wave of phone calls didn’t encompass them all.

Not that they even had the resources to deal with such a large-scale crisis: for any given day in Possum Springs, the two-person police force was more than overkill when dealing with the infrequent vandalistic teen or railroad vagabond. The feline officer was even capable of compensating for her elderly coworker’s limited mobility, taking on a disproportionate amount of legwork when so little occurred at any given time.

Yet this… this was overwhelming, even with the support of precincts from neighboring communities. As if her copious consumption of coffee and caffeine wasn’t evidence enough, the workload demanded by such circumstance meant Molly was only just getting to her first questioning of those who’d reported the disappearances: it had taken her over 24 hours since the first phone call and jotting down simple details for the report to meet the _first_ victim’s family in person.

She’d feel guiltier had she not been working the entire time. In those early hours of yesterday morning, it seemed the phone calls would never stop. The first report had very clearly triggered the rest, instilling panic across the town of Possum Springs and nudging those who’d been initially reluctant to call in with additional reported vanishings. The call from her sister, exposing the latest disappearance–the officer’s own niece–had prompted immediate visitation, yet that had been more personal than professional. The ever-expanding scope of the incident ultimately culminated in the organization of emergency search parties to comb the woods, despite the lack of evidence pointing there. The all-night search coming up emptyhanded only led Molly to _right_ _here:_ to an excess of investigative work and an insuppressible timer, ticking away in the back of her mind.

The self-prescribed urgency only hastened her pitfall into desperation. Yet it wasn’t exactly like this was the sort of thing you could take your time with. _You’re on the clock, Molly. And every minute you waste is another they spend who knows where._

The reminder shook Molly out of her momentary slump, returning her attention to the squad car she resided in. In fluid motion, she slammed the open visor shut, turned the keys out of ignition, and reached to grab her ninth cup of coffee since her last encounter with sleep. Downing its remaining contents, she abandoned the Styrofoam container and emerged from her vehicle, forcing the energy to return to her when caffeine failed to do so.

 _Seems like construction treated the Adams alright,_ Molly noted offhandedly as her right paw guided the white door closed. The feline officer’s eyes remained trained on her first interviewee’s property as she strode casually by the black hood of her car, approaching the white two-story farmhouse. The covered front porch, picturesque flower patches, and oversized front windows only seemed to confirm the cat’s suspicions.

Perhaps a career change was in Molly’s future.

 _Other construction workers in town can’t hope to match this standard of living,_ she thought more pointedly. _And to have a stay at home wife and two daughters on top of that…_ Molly snorted, climbing the bluestone steps up onto the porch of a house that cost twice her own net worth. _One of them is bound to have some rich parents._

Judging by the appearance of Mrs. Adams when she opened the front door, Molly would gamble it was her.

“Hello there, Officer.” Standing in the open doorframe was the gray female rat. Wringing her hands nervously, the fair-furred wife anxiously awaiting news of her missing husband still wore an outfit expensive enough to make the cat feel undressed in her standard issue (although admittedly disheveled) police uniform by comparison.

“Officer Molly.” The cat extended a hand out to the rodent. The act of making any sort of introduction seemed silly; in a town as small as Possum Springs, where Molly was the only active part of its law enforcement, it felt as if everyone was at least familiar with the feline. Yet the Adams family and their upper-middle class housing fell just far enough outside of Town Proper that they’d somehow managed to slip through the cracks of the community.

“Jeanie Adams.”  Of course, Molly already knew the rat’s name from the panic-laced phone call they’d shared two nights before. Nevertheless, she just nodded in affirmation as the simple pleasantries of exchanging names faded away to the more loaded topics which an officer’s presence commonly heralded. The smaller mammal–as Jeanie was markedly shorter than Molly–took the cat’s outstretched paw in her own. They reached the unspoken agreement that a single shake seemed appropriate. “Why don’t we step inside?”

“Let’s.” Following the path paved out by her escort, Molly soon found herself inside the Adams’ not-so-humble abode. The plentiful supply of framed vacation photos and wall art was not something the middle-aged cat would find in her home. As they passed the second variation of _Live, Laugh, Love,_ Molly was just thankful she’d seemingly missed her calling as a homemaker: the feline could never feign that simple appreciation for impractical knickknacks and tacky décor.

Once the footsteps of Jeanie Adams drew to a close, Molly found herself within a living room. The welcoming yet clearly forced smile of a distressed hostess prompted the cat to take a seat on one of the two couches that formed a 90-degree angle in the room’s center, with the open space before the two sofas occupied with a sleek glass coffee table. However, it seemed Jeanie herself was in no mood to sit, opting instead to hover nervously behind the second piece of furniture.

“Would you like some tea?” she offered. “I already put a kettle on the stove.”

“Urgh… no thanks.” If her last few gallons of coffees hadn’t managed to expel the heavy weight bearing down on her (as well as under her eyelids), Molly had serious doubts that tea would be the solution. Not to mention the idea of another liquid sloshing around her empty stomach made the cat queasy.

When exactly _was_ the last time she had eaten?

“Oh… alright.” The younger housewife seemed thrown by the cat’s refusal, yet Molly was hardly concerned with social etiquette amid problems like her own. If the woman wanted to drink tea and make casual discussion, she should invite her upper echelon friends over and act sophisticated on their own time; right now, Molly had an investigation to commence.

 _God. For a cat, I sound an awful lot like a bitch._ The officer sighed and pressed her face into her paws. A poor temperament may have been expected after two days without sleep, but Molly knew she needed to reel in the bitterness woven into her every thought if she hoped to make it through today’s interviews. _And that’s interviews, plural._ Sleep was still a long way off for the feline.

Withdrawing the furry limbs from before her eye sockets, Molly opened her mouth to begin taking a more extensive report from Jeanie Adams. To her displeasure, she found the missing rat’s spouse had also vanished: it seemed the cat was left to dawdle as the woman she intended to question slipped off to the kitchen in order to prepare herself a cup.

 _Great._ Molly grunted quietly and leaned back on the couch, allowing her body’s desperate plea for rest to wash over her, if at least for a moment. Half a minute passed, and the cat peaked a single eye open, searching carefully for her interviewee’s return. Coming up empty, the officer sighed and pushed off from the couch’s back cushions into an upright position with something resembling professionalism–had it not been for her slumped shoulders and fatigue which pervaded every aspect of how she presented herself.

On the glass table, facing directly towards the cat, was a small framed photograph which captured her attention–doing so, not in any sort of meaningful way, but by the manner in which her eyes were naturally drawn to it and her interest at least moderately peaked by the family profile presented by it.

An image of the Adams’ nuclear family found itself deeply entrenched in Officer Molly’s mind as the cat reached out to grab the photo. In it, of course, was Jeanie and her two kids, young enough that she suspected neither truly knew what was going on and had been shepherded off to school this morning in spite of their father’s disappearance in some cheap attempt to perpetuate a half-baked facade of normalcy. Yet the real focus of the feline’s thoughts was the sturdily built man behind them, standing fondly beside his wife:

 _Edison Adams._ A light gray furred rat with 42 years under his belt; life-long resident of Possum Springs who’d married out of high school, had two daughters, and quickly settled into construction to support them. His life story was a fairly typical one, if Molly were to be honest, give-or-take a few Mad Libs style fill-ins. Yet the only part of his life which intrigued the feline officer was this last week of it.

It wasn’t difficult to pick up on a certain sort of pattern when pouring over the filed missing person reports. And pour over them Officer Molly had, just as her job detailed. Of the seven, five–Tommy Daminco, Creek Walters, Andrew Brooks, Cooper Rogers and Dan McConnell–were last seen Monday afternoon or night, either by co-workers, bosses, bartenders or their respective wives. That placed a bulk of the disappearances occurring sometime around the night of the 6th.

Then there were the two oddities. Margaret Borowski, the daughter of the officer’s sister, had been last sighted the very next night, on Tuesday the 7th. She left in her wake a crime scene: a thoroughly battered and broken bedroom. The existence of such a site was wholly unique in the fact that no such scene had been found for the other six corresponding victims, which led Molly to question whether it was something else entirely.

Which left just one. A reported disappearance fitting the same demographic and age range as the rest, and appearing just as similar to those first five, had it not been for a single peculiarity: Edison Adams hadn’t been seen since Saturday.

Since the 4th, two days prior to any other report, there had been no sightings of Adams. His wife and kids hadn’t heard from him since that morning; in fact, the last people to do so were his crewmembers after parting ways with him from the construction site in Saltztown. Which, quite possibly, made him the very first disappearance.

“Sorry about that.” The gentle clink of a porcelain saucer on glass preceded the manner in which the rodent slowly lowered herself to the couch. Jeanie’s apology tore Molly away from her internal ruminations, causing the cat to realize she’d completely spaced out while glancing over the family photo. “Just need a little something for my nerves, I guess.”

“It’s no issue.” As she set the picture frame down, Molly tried her best to sound reassuring: even if her mood wasn’t inclined to, the situation called for a bit more comfort to be spared for those whose loved ones had suddenly vanished. And in all fairness, the domestic tendencies of this upper-class housewife were far less grating then the habits of trailer park trash on the other end of town. The officer would choose Jeanie’s dilly-dally nature and haughty wall art over cigarette smoke blown in her face and familial screaming matches any day.

“Where exactly were we?” the smaller rodent asked, bringing the teacup to her lips as she looked to the cop across from her expectantly. Molly felt a pang of sympathy as she recognized the slight shaking which racked the rat’s whole body, threatening to spill the liquid had it not been quickly captured by trembling lips.

“I’m afraid we haven’t found your husband yet, Jeanie.” Leading with that, Molly hoped to put the rodent’s nerves at ease with the best and worst of the news. Worst, as it left the anxious wife in continuing uncertainty, yet best, because it ruled out the one outcome worse than finding nothing at all. “Last night’s search was only an emergency protocol, so we could rule out the woods and make sure nobody was trapped in the wilderness in need of a time-sensitive rescue.” Jeanie continued to nod as Molly spoke, alternating between biting her lower lip and sipping hurriedly on her tea. The feline offhandedly wondered whether the rat had adjusted to the boiling hot temperature of the substance she was gulping down, or if she was just too distracted to notice it.

“What does that mean for Eddy? If he’s not stuck out in the forest, you think he’s safe? Or at least, safer than if he were?” Jeanie hazarded a rapid-fire list of questions, and truthfully, Molly had concrete answers to none.

“It’s… a good start,” the officer carefully asserted. The non-answer had its intended effect and seemed to calm the rat. “At the very least, we can rule out a rather large area around Possum Springs.”

“What about Saltztown?” Jeanie seemed to springboard off of the cat’s word choice. “Eddy went missing out by his site in Saltztown. We–we should look there–”

“We plan to.” The jittery rat across from her was starting to worry the officer quite a bit. Perhaps Molly should have taken the other up on that offer of tea; whatever was in Mrs. Adams’ cup supplied the rodent with no shortage of energy. “In fact, Officer McCarthy is looking into the path from your husbands’ construction site as we speak.” Molly’s gratefulness for the neighboring police forces really could not be expressed.

“Oh. Okay.” The shaking seemed to ease a little, and Jeanie seemed to have reclaimed a bit more control. “Okay.”

“If it’s alright with you,” Molly began, digging a familiar notepad from her jacket pocket. She swore, she had more use for this damned thing in the last 24 hours than in a whole year. “I’d like to ask a bit more about… _Eddy_.” Not so much about the specifics of the disappearance, as Molly already had those, but about Edison Adams, the person: Who did he work with? How’d he spend his free time? Had there been anything odd regarding Jeanie’s husband as of late, or did they live a life just as picturesque as their family portrait suggested? Anything at all that may have had some impact on the actions of this missing rat leading up to November 4 th. Perhaps knowing these things could paint a clearer picture of just what was going on. “I’ve got a few questions about your husband that I’d like answers to, beyond our initial discussion.”

“Ah, well,” Jeanie placed her empty porcelain teacup on the waiting saucer. “I’m glad to do anything that might help the process of finding my husband.”

“Great.” Molly flipped through sheets of scribbled notes to the newest empty page. She planted her elbows on her thighs, placing the open pad in her left paw and uncapping the pen in her right.

“Is this like… a formal report or something?” As expected, the rat seemed unversed in this sort of thing. Beyond the realm of television true-crime and Hollywood cop movies, she probably hadn’t had much experience with police questionings. Not that that was a bad thing. “Like, should I start with my husband and I’s full names?

Despite the restlessness caused by this investigation, Molly had to suppress the snort this suggestion spurred; the strange offer was clearly inspired by some shallow misunderstanding of how these types of things worked, yet the officer couldn’t help but be amused by it. “Yeah, sure. Give your names for the official record.” If the officer was truly in need of it, she could just request the local records on file for town residents, but she was in desperate need of some comedy right now.

The rat across from her cleared her throat, using a cough that even managed to _sound_ prim and proper. Then she spoke, with Molly prepared to transcribe any information she deemed worthy. “I am Jeanie Rose Adams, friend and partner of Edison Lurv Adams…”

* * *

 _How the hell does Mae manage to do this?_ The thin black wires were strung loosely between the tops of telephone poles, leading to a slight arching suspension of the power lines that the cat in question managed to traverse so simply; go ahead and blame him, but Gregg couldn’t help but find the prospect of crossing a cable less than half the width of his foot a bit unsettling.

Course, none of that helped the fact the fox was already standing atop the first telephone pole, hastily questioning every life decision and why he seemed to value his wellbeing so little. Maybe a bit of Angus was rubbing off on him, but the threat of losing his footing, slipping and falling to the surface seemed quite real and… well, threatening. So too was the possibility of a poorly placed step onto an unprotected transistor, or an uncovered wire, or a–

“Hey!” The loud, high pitched voice of his new partner-in-climb startled Gregg, nearly sending him off his temporary perch and onto the cement landing below. He quickly recovered, while the mouse across the wire tried to readjust her volume level as to not shatter the delicate balance which all the fox’s focus was dedicated to maintaining. “You alright over there, Gregg?”

Glancing up to the next pole, the fox flashed Lori a thumbs up, not trusting his voice when his entire body felt like a tightly wound spring: it turned out to be the wrong move, as the hand gesture also nearly threatened to disrupt the canine’s already compromised equilibrium.

 _Mae does shit like this all the time._ Mae was also a _cat,_ Gregg’s brain told him, and she was therefore blessed with the incredible gift of a long, winding tail which functioned like a fifth limb in the aid of balance. _Felines._

And yet, having just watched the younger mouse scurry across the line without the hesitance or caution he demonstrated told Gregg that the skill of electrical wire trapeze wasn’t limited to one species.

“We can find another way to the rooftops if you’d like,” Lori offered gently, clearly sensing the other’s discomfort. “There’s a spot in the back alley between–”

“It’s cool,” Gregg said, a bit too forcefully to play off as _cool._ He’d promised Angus he’d be safe, yet despite his cold feet, the fox figured something like this should be easy enough. Even being out of practice as he was, Mae and him had shared plenty of rooftop escapades in their high school years. _It’s gotta be like riding a bike._ Once you’d learned to walk thin, poorly supported platforms suspended dozens of feet into the air, the skill never really leaves you, right?

His nervous jitters seemed to have another opinion. As did the pesky voice reminding Gregg that telephone lines didn’t really qualify as a solid “platform.”

Seeing this for herself, Lori tried to give the canine another out. “It’s really no big deal–”

“I got this!” the fox barked back, and it was Lori’s turn to recoil back from the shout as the offender steadied himself with two outstretched arms. The tiny shakes racking his body made the activity rather difficult. The fox took a deep breath to try and calm his nerves; the rodent sealed her lips shut and resigned herself from pushing the other further.

 _Relax Gregg; you’ve got this._ The fox was sure that was the case: he _did_ have this.

The first step signified otherwise, as the fox’s foot slipped from the powerline and nearly sent him plummeting to the road; he’d be little more than a splattered puddle had it not been for a quick scrabble back to his original position. Both mammals breathed a sigh of relief, hearts pulsating like the alternating current of the electricity running beneath them. Despite herself, Lori tried to give a final warning. “Gregg…” It fell on deaf ears, as the blood rushing in the canine’s ears quite literally made it impossible for the older mammal to hear the rodent’s tentative whisper.

 _I’ve got this._ For some reason, at that moment, nothing else seemed quite as important as proving that fact. A fit of spontaneity decreed that Gregg must do so, and the fox had never been one to ignore the impulses which pulsated through him like his own personal electric rhythm.

His second attempt got off to a better start: at a bare minimum, he at least got to one this time, as the canine’s left foot found a place atop the wire rather than off the side of it. Yet if balancing on a telephone pole shook the fox’s body with anxiety, the sensation quickly doubled as he placed his entire body weight over the narrow strip of telephone line; just as soon as Gregg’s second step carried him away from the wooden post, he found himself missing the feeling of footing not susceptible to the most subtle shifts of body weight.

 _Too late to turn back now._ The vulpine wasn’t even sure if he was capable of turning around on such thin wire. Either way, Gregg committed himself to keep moving forward, even when the next two steps carried him farther across the unsteady suspension, onto the wobbliest portion of the unconventional walkway. Nevertheless, it really seemed like Gregg _did_ have it, as he slowly made his way across the limp rubber trapeze to the relief of both Lori and himself.

Only when the fifth step missed its target and plunged toward the surface did the two mammals realize that, in fact, Gregg did _not_ have it. That is, unless “it” was the bouncing black wire clutched between two frightened paws as their owner held on for dear life.

The first noise to sound from either of the panicky pair was a high-pitched squeal from the canine, which would have been considerably funnier had he not been hanging on a line dozens of feet above hard pavement. The second was a violent gasp from the nearby mouse.

“Gregg!” Loudly shouting the fox’s name was probably the least helpful contribution Lori could make, but that realization didn’t seem to strike her as the ever-familiar tendrils of panic began to ensnare the rodent.

“I’m okay!” The weak reassurance was comically ineffective; the desperate yelp in Gregg’s voice communicated his true condition to both mammals pretty apparently. Plus, it was kind of hard _not_ to be shaken by a very close encounter with a 30-foot plummet.

“Oh god oh god…” Dark blue eyes flitted down to the streets below as Lori surveyed the area for any immediate passerby. Their absence meant the mouse would be securing no help from people down below. “C–can you pull yourself up?”

Gregg tried imagining the act: while hoisting his body up over the elastic wire at least seemed feasible, actually managing to get atop the telephone and regain his balance seemed improbable.

“Gregg?”

“I’m thinking!” the fox snapped back. It might’ve been a little too harsh, especially since the mouse was only concerned, but the situation had Gregg’s own nerves a little frayed. Swallowing the lump in his throat, he glanced back toward the telephone pole his solid-surface loving feet had found sanctuary from only moments before. Maybe he could shimmy his way back over: from there he could return to the ground… Or give it another go.

 _You’re crazy,_ a little voice inside the vulpine’s head, sounding remarkably like a certain brown bear, reprimanded him. _If you think anything good can come from trying this again, you’re a lunatic._ Then again, Gregg had never prided himself on being sane. And something inside him still just _knew_ he could do this; those first two attempts had only been slight missteps.

So, he got back to his pole; it involved the process of slowly nudging his paws down the line until he reached it, hazarding only the most miniscule of movements as the idea of releasing either hand’s grasp of the wire terrified the fox, but it was eventually accomplished.

“I’m… I’m gonna try again!” Gregg cautiously made his way back to a standing position up on the cylindrical wooden platform. He tried ignoring the burning sensation of sore muscles in his arms, just as he ignored the dissenting cries from his younger (though far more sensible) furry friend.

“What? No!” Lori’s heart was pounding much faster than the fox’s, which seemingly made sense: clearly, she had a much higher concern for the other’s safety than Gregg did.

This third trial by far got off to the best start, regardless of murine objection. Perhaps it was the adrenaline pumping through Gregg’s veins, or the pure determination he emanated, but as the canine reached the halfway mark, it really seemed like he might make it–but of course, that’s usually how the tropes of this sort go.

“Oh shi–”

One misplaced step–the front of his shoe caught on the heel of the next–and his entire life was jeopardized by the compromise of balance. He tipped to his right, away from the telephone line trapeze… and into a solid brick building.

**_THUD_ **

The pain which ripped through his shoulder was immediately noticed, but it was preferable to what would’ve happened had the structure not been there to catch him on his fall. _I’ll take a bruised shoulder over being hospitalized any day._

“Y–you’re okay, j–just don’t move, alright?” More than anything else, it was Lori’s reassurances which alerted Gregg to the fact that something had gone horribly awry. His morbid humor quickly gave way to the terrifying realization that the building was bit farther from the telephone line than he thought–and that he was much closer to a horizontal position than a vertical one.

_Holy shit holy shit holy shit_

The realization nearly threatened to take his legs out from under him–which would not be a very good thing in this situation, as the fox was propped between a wire and a hard place. The line was stretched and taut, pushed by Gregg’s feet to be as far away from the building as possible; the canine’s upper body was pinned by his shoulder against the brick wall. To put the fox’s state of affairs simply:

_Holy shit holy shit holy shit holy sh–_

“I–I’ll be right over.” Lori told the other, though Gregg couldn’t possibly imagine the little mouse crossing the terribly crooked telephone line as it was. And even if the younger mammal _could_ make the journey across, there was still the _teensy_ problem of helping Gregg upright and bringing them both to safety, all whilst balancing over the wire. Of course, the fox voiced none of this, because his entire will was being directed toward holding back the desperate cry for help and not budging a single inch.

It was only when the mouse made no move toward the taut black line that Gregg realized she had another plan of action in mind. Instead, Lori lifted herself onto the nearby building ledge, pulling her smaller body up onto the windowsills. _Perfect._ She’d be able to knock on one of the windows and get the attention of someone working in that office. They’d call the police, maybe some firefighters, get a ladder and help Gregg get down; the potential run-in with law enforcement was less perturbing than the idea of holding this position for a quarter hour.

Of course, all that hopeful thinking was tossed aside once the mouse got a running start and jumped the gap between her building and the one Gregg remained pinned to. The surprise of it all somehow managed to raise the fox’s already elevated heartrate. But nevertheless, the rodent landed atop her target with a resounding smack of two feet placed firmly on the structure’s roofing. Gracelessly, Lori slid down the roof shingles onto the lowest part of it, finding herself just a foot above the trapped yellow fox.

“I… I don’t think… I don’t think I can pull you up on… on my own.” Gregg would hate to see the mouse freeze up now, but she appeared extraordinarily winded after just one jump. “Can you pull–pull yourself up if I can get your paws onto the roof?”

“Yeah.” Gregg nodded his head up towards the girl without really considering it. The ceaseless beating of a heart in his chest told him he’d be able to lift just about anything right now, never mind his small twink self. The problem was getting from his current position to one where he could put that situational strength to the test without losing his fragile footing.

Lori solved that problem where Gregg alone could not: lying down atop the structure, her outstretched arms gave the fox those few extra inches he needed so that he might get himself off the brick wall without issue. Then, it was only a matter of guiding the hands upwardly, reaching toward that green siding. From there, the fox could do the rest.

The task was finished when the canine found solid material beneath him once again; the immense wave of relief which overtook him sent him collapsing down against the slanted roof–an action copied by the rodent with strained breathing beside him.

 _You’s a dumb bitch._ Gregg had to admit that much, as the fox hadn’t even recovered from the shock of nearly severe injury before his brain identified him as such. Panting tiredly, the canine’s eyes strayed off, scanning their surroundings as his mind chastised his senseless shenanigans.

 _What the hell was I thinking?_  He replayed the promise of safety he’d given Angus just yesterday. A promise he’d very much ignored trying to cross those powerlines thrice. _It’s gonna be awfully hard to convince him to stay with you if you’re in a full body cast for the next six months._ Or dead. Furry vulpine ears splayed flat across the top of the fox’s head guiltily. _You’re such an idiot._

It was only when the adrenaline faded that the orange fox remembered something important about the young gray mammal beside him. “Oh shit.” Gregg scrambled into a seated position, turning to face the rodent with memories of their first encounter in the forest embedded in his mind. “You alright, Lori?”

The mouse let out a long, drawn out breath; the rapid rise and fall of her chest had slowed dramatically in the time Gregg took to calm himself. Yet Lori remained still, back pressed to the rough asphalt shingles as her eyes traced the upside-down image of the chimney behind them, her gaze refusing to return to the canine.

“I’m okay.” Her voice was small, and the comment rushed quickly out her mouth between another exhale and inhale. Both signs for concern.

“You having another panic attack?” The question seemed to throw the mouse, catching her off guard amidst one of her carefully measured breaths. “Cause I don’t mind trying to help if you want.”

“Nah, it’s–it’s good.” Lori managed after another complete emptying of her lungs. “It’s p–pretty much over now.”

“Oh. Okay.” Gregg took the mouse’s word for it and sat idly as she finished wresting control back from her anxiety. Whatever she did to handle the problem seemed to work; a few minutes later and both mammals’ breathing sounded completely normal–as if one of them hadn’t just narrowly cheated death.

“So maybe the powerlines aren’t for you.” It was the first thing either them said after a long bout of silence, and the fact that Lori was the one delivering the line made it all the more comical to the fox, who snorted in response.

“You think?” Gregg smirked back at the mouse, whose shy grin only grew from the encouragement.

“I mean, I only tried telling you like six times beforehand.” The mouse prodded the other with some light teasing. “Are you always so stubborn?”

“What can I say?” The canine exposed his canines in a wide grin. “It’s part of my parking lot trash charm.”

“Hate to say it, but that signature appeal of yours is gonna get you splattered across the pavement.”

“I could live with that.”

“Nope. Don’t quite think you can.” They snickered in pair, with Lori’s laughter only slightly more reserved than the fox’s. “Unless you don’t mind them removing every broken bone in your body,” the younger mammal continued to tease, in a manner not too unlike those unconventional greetings Gregg would trade with the missing cat they sought.

“Hehe. Yeah–” Only difference here was that once the mouse began, she apparently refused to stop, and her proposed situation stretched further into a fully developed narrative.

“–forcing you to live out your days as a formless, nondescript puddle of mangled flesh and fur, kept alive on life support for scientific experimentation–” Gregg was unable to keep the surprise from his face, yet Lori, in her hyperactive state, was too absorbed in her fabrication to notice. “–until one day you escape from the lab, and, resentful of your captors, seek your vengeance on them one by one until you’re captured and…” The mouse’s energetic storytelling seemed to fizzle out as she realized what she was doing. “…finally disposed… of.”

Lori’s tale stumbled to its close as the last words crawled from the self-conscious mammal’s mouth, the confidence and inertia behind her story crumbling as she became aware of herself. And then, nothing but crickets–or rather, there would have at least been their chirping had the two not been lying dozens of feet above the center of town.

The ensuing silence told the rodent all she needed to know: mousey ears flattened against the gray fur of her head, already prepared for the incoming verbal onslaught in retaliation for her resounding _weirdness._ Too late, she recognized that she’d overstepped the unspoken boundary of socially accepted conversation with a vivid horror creation. Or so she thought.

“Damn.” Lori saw the signs as the fox took another moment to fully recover from her strange tangent. Cheeks burning red, she searched desperately for some half-decent defense of herself. She was ultimately put off-guard by the canine’s response. “Mind if I use that?”

“…Huh?” It wasn’t exactly the off-putting, condescending judgment she was expecting to hear. Fortunately for her, Lori had forgotten just who she was speaking to: a friend of Mae and Germ couldn’t be so unacquainted with strangeness.

“Against Mae.” Gregg elaborated, clearly not as caught up on the mouse’s narrative as she had expected. “I mean, there’s no way she’ll be able to top that.”

“Um… sure.” Lori smiled awkwardly. Truthfully, Lori had no idea what the fox was even talking about; she was just glad it seemed not to have destroyed whatever conversation this was.

“Speaking of her, we should probably get going, huh?” Gregg stood tall, dusting loose debris from his black jacket. “For all the time we’ve spent here, I gotta imagine Mae’s on some other rooftop.”

“…Oh, right.” In the wake of near-death experiences and fatal embarrassment, the purpose of this venture had nearly escaped the pair. “But you should probably stay clear from the telephone lines for now.” Lori took care to remind the other of his mortal weakness.

“…That might be difficult to do.” The rooftop they’d isolated themselves atop was almost solely accessible by the thin wobbly wires; leaving the area without the use of them seemed impossible.

 “Huh.” Lori looked around, and eventually settled on the jump which got her here. “Think you can clear that gap?”

Gregg followed the other’s gaze toward the tan platform she’d launched herself from, surrounding the third floor of the Telezoft building. So soon after the last incident, the fox was reluctant to commit himself to such a large jump. “Maybe if we were higher up.”

The two scrambled to the top of their slanted roof, making their way over loose black shingles and onto the building’s apex, to the place most advantageous for their jump. And just when Gregg was about to issue a word of caution, the mouse took a running leap for the protruding windowsills, sending a jolt of panic down the other’s spine as she nearly fumbled her landing.

“Little warning next time?”

“Sorry.” The mouse shot back a coy grin; then she saw the newly placed emotion in the fox’s eyes, and figured she best say something before they found themselves back at square one. “If you can’t make the jump, there’s another way up around the back using the fire escape–”

The canine made no move to silence the other with words this time: if there was hesitation in his eyes, it was because he’d had flashbacks to his last attempt at rooftop exploration minutes before. Yet this was different, not in the least because it was substantially less of a party-trick balancing act but rather a real test of athleticism. If the thin wired telephone trapeze wasn’t his forte, he’d be a fool to let this teenager show him up on this as well–not when so much of his and Mae’s youth had been dedicated to getting places where figures of authority said they shouldn’t be. Instead, Gregg silenced the other with a swift and practiced jump over the distance.

“Maybe you could give a word of warning too, huh?” The fox smirked at the mouse’s surprised response. He felt much more comfortable with this sort of stuff when those wires weren’t involved.

“Where’d you wanna search first?” Gregg prompted, finally feeling confident enough to begin; it’d been years since his last bout with high-stakes, high-heights rooftop parkour, and the fox would be lying if he said the risk-prone behavior felt a little nice.

Unfortunately, this free-climbing escapade wasn’t without interruptions.

“Right over here, actually.” Disappointment washed over Gregg as Lori approached a nearby window and slowly jimmied it open, signifying another pause from large jumps and dangerous climbing. However, the fox’s excitement for open-air adventure was quickly usurped by another, more dominant passion of his.

“Breaking and entering?” _Sweet._ The more he learned about Mae’s rodent friend, the more Gregg agreed with Germ’s decision to induct her into this investigation. _Anyone who’s down for a B &E can’t be all bad._

“Nah. I usually see Mae heading in here before she hangs out with me on the roof next door.” Lori paused for a moment with the window fully opened. Rethinking that now, the evidence she took that this wasn’t illegal was actually the strongest indicator that it was. “Actually, never mind. Yeah, definitely breaking and entering.”

“Sweet.” The fox crouched down beside Lori and slowly stepped into the window, completely unfazed by (or more accurately, motivated by) the promise of unlawful activity. A moment of internal dispute led the younger mammal into following the older, potential consequence be damned. (Plus, Lori was pretty sure that the punishment for trespassing as a minor was equivalent to a slap on the wrist, so at least she was in the clear.)

“So… what is this place?” The mouse slipped into the tan room before the window slid shut behind her. They could get it open again when they needed to get out. _Probably._ Glancing around the location in question, Lori found that the abundance of brown cardboard boxes didn’t provide much more of an answer than she already had.

“I dunno,” she supplied to the other, rather unhelpfully. “Just somewhere Mae seems to come pretty regularly.”

“Seems like a good place to run off to, if she needed to.” Gregg scanned the room. The thick layers of dust and fresh rodent droppings made it pretty clear this place didn’t see much use.

Lori’s muzzle scrunched in disgust upon viewing the scattered feces. “If you don’t mind rats.”

Gregg recalled his conversation with Mae in the Party Barn–the part about giving the town a rat infestation. It was a safe bet the feline wouldn’t be too put off by them. “Mae doesn’t.” Lori snorted, and the canine cackled in amusement. “I take it you do?”

“…I don’t not _not_ like rats.” The careful phrasing didn’t change much.

“Hmph.” Gregg decided not to linger on the irony of the rodent’s position–by then, the two mammals’ attention had shifted to the single closed door accessible from the room. Always the kindred spirit for legally inadvisable decisions, the canine took charge on opening it.

The next room was darker, lacking the natural light of a poorly locking window; the effect was an area which appeared a deep turquoise, with exposed pipes and disrepair evident throughout the facility. Immediately upon stumbling beyond the doorframe, the pair found themselves poised above a stairwell, overlooking the stockpile of cheap plastic flowers gathered below.

“…Huh.” Lori exhaled, questioning the sight; Gregg agreed with the younger mammal’s response to the discovery. Of his many occasions dabbling in private property invasion, a bounty of dollar store decorations was one of the stranger items to find, especially in Towne Centre. Cautiously the two made their way down the steps, as if seriously considering the possibility of the plastic floras shapeshifting into something more devious as they approached.

To the great surprise of all involved, when they reached the bottom of the stairs the pink flowers remained just that: eye-gouging and tacky, but harmless as long as one wasn’t considering the ecological ramifications of their production. Curious, the canine reached out to investigate them further.

“This is, kinda really weird.” Lori muttered, confusion dripping from her voice. She wasn’t alone. “What’s up with the plasticized flower garden?”

“I think... maybe these are from the spring festival?” If Gregg were to hazard a guess, it seemed as good as any.

“Since when’d Possum Springs have a spring festival?” Lori prodded curiously, grabbing one of the floral props to test for herself.

“Oh, right.” It’d slipped the fox’s mind that he had the better part of a decade on her. “They stopped doing it when I was around 10 or 11. You were probably too young to remember.”

“You serious?” Gregg couldn’t blame Lori’s skepticism: living your whole life in the shrinking confines of Possum Springs made every new discovery about the place seem weirdly out of place, as if the town grew bigger even while it shriveled up to die.

“Uh huh.” The spring festival had certainly once been a reality, but Gregg was just guessing that was what these flowers were from: there was a distinct possibility that Telezoft utilized this floor for convenient storage of the few hundred plastic flowers they had on hand. The fox had never actually gone to the spring parade, or seen the flowers for long enough that they’d leave any impression in his memory. His parents had never taken him.

“Why’d they stop it?”

“Some kid got his legs crushed by a runaway parade float,” Gregg answered without missing a beat. Now _that_ was a year he wished to have seen.

“Whoa.”

“Yeah.” _Poor Chris Evans._ He had been kind of a dick in grade school, but he probably didn’t deserve the month-long hospital visit caused by the loose duck on wheels. _Actually…_ Chris become a lot nicer after the incident. _And hotter._ Assuming his injuries didn’t resurface in old age, Gregg would count that as a fair trade off.

“Kinda spooky actually.” The mouse barely breathed the words, but canine ears picked them up easily enough in such close quarters distance.

“Huh?” The fox tilted a head questioningly toward the mouse.

“Well ya know…” Lori seemed flustered that he had heard her. “Some huge float, chasing down one of the dudes who came to watch it be paraded orderly down the street by a few tiny handlers…”

“You talk about the float like it’s some sort of sentient thing.” Gregg grinned, even as the mouse buried an embarrassed face into two paws.

“Just… forget about it. It’s stupid.” The other’s lack of self-confidence tore at the fox’s heart strings. _The teenage anxiety is real._ The canine had been plenty familiar with the phenomena in his high school years–hell, most people had. He’d be surprised to hear that any of that had changed.

“Nah.” Gregg refused to let that be the end of it, especially when the mouse was in such clear need of an ego boost. “I think that’s a cooler way of looking at it.” Even if Lori wasn’t convinced, the image of the parade duck as a vengeful, angry being honing in on one of the heretics who’d come to mock its domestication _was_ much cooler that the reality that a loose teether led to the hospitalization of its victim.

The boxes of identical pink flowers could only entertain them for so long. “Hey.” The mouse was the first to suggest that they move on; nodding toward the second staircase, ascending in the opposite direction of their first, Lori asked, “…What do you think is up there?”

“Dunno.” Gregg shrugged, abandoning his cheap retired decoration to its decade-long resting place. “I know how to find out though.” The fox scaled the stairs once more as the rodent filed in behind him. Ignoring the fire escape, there was only one door for the pair to explore.

 _Speak of our savior and he shall appear._ The last room revealed the darkest territory, but contained the most intriguing contents: the all-powerful duck float himself. Gregg grinned amusedly at the sight of it. _No teether can bound his holiness._ Of course, his second observation was a bit more on-topic.

“No Mae.” _And no more doors to check._ They’d exhausted this area and found no sign of the cat.

“But there’s a big ol’ duckie.” Lori seemed impressed. Which was fair: even if she took his word for it, it was something else entirely to come into contact with a buried Possum Springs tradition. “This is…?”

“Yeah.” _Evans’ attacker._ The parade float responsible for the end of said tradition. _And possibly for Chris’ lucky run with puberty._

“…cool.” It was amusing, but not what either had been hoping for; they sought something a bit more feline. A moment of silence enveloped them, until something finally struck the canine.

“…weird.”

“What’s that?” Lori, still lodged in the doorway between two rooms, peeked around the fox, looking up to him for explanation.

“Nothing.” The fox frowned, trying to piece the realization together. “Just that I can’t figure out what Mae would come here for.”

“Maybe she’s a closet parade float enthusiast?” The mouse wedged herself past the other and into the room to get a better look at it.

“You know, I could see it.” Lori snickered at the joke, but Gregg stood, continuing to ponder on just what attracted Mae to this place.

“Did Mae used to go to the Spring Fest?” Lori leaned close to the wooden duck, examining the… unique choice of costume and peering into the gaping hole in the structure.

“I dunno.”

“Huh? Why not?” The mouse leaned a bit closer, squinting to see into the float despite the poor lighting.

“All this happened before Mae and me were friends.” Gregg shrugged. “Guess I never asked her about it.” … _Should I have asked her about it?_ It seemed like an awfully specific thing to get caught up on–then again, regularly visiting the incidental resting place of the Possum Springs’ Spring Festival was an awfully specific thing for the cat to be doing.

Any thoughts along that vein were derailed by Lori’s shrill scream. Snapping out from his thoughts, Gregg saw the mouse collapse backwards, falling to the ground and away from the parade float she’d been investigating.

“What’s wrong?” The fox was quick to ask; he was admittedly less quick to put himself between Lori and the assumedly frightening parade float. Call him superstitious, but a cult member had manifested behind them in an elevator only days before–at that point, how far of a jump in logic was it for a parade float, decommissioned in the wake of a violent incident, to become malevolent and sentient? Gregg wasn’t about to rule out any more horror stories in Possum Springs.

He waited for an answer from the mouse, who sat with a paw clutching her chest and her breathing strained once more. When an answer was finally extracted from her, it came in the form of nervous laughter. Not the nervous-but-in-a-scared-sort-of-way-nervous, but rather the nervous-cause-I’m-unsettled-yet-not-specifically-in-danger kind of way (even if it might not seem it, Gregg upheld that there was a perceptible difference).

“I don’t really know what I expected.” Lori sputtered out another series of unsettled chuckling. “But I guess the duck’s a rat’s nest now.”

As if on cue, an audible squeak sounded from within the parade float, and Gregg was willing to bet that it didn’t come from the duck’s decade old and long-unused tires. Yet beyond the rodents’ high-pitched cries, they made no effort to showcase their presence to the room’s visitors, a courtesy which was clearly appreciated by the larger mouse.

“That might explain Mae’s love for this place.” Gregg guessed this was the cat’s ground-zero for the rat-based invasion of Possum Springs: that answered the mystery of why she’d been here, but unfortunately, proved irrelevant to the quandary of where she was now. “Cool. But like, also, kinda gross.” Mae might not mind, but now that Gregg knew what resided here, he could make out the distinct odor of copious amounts of rat residue.

“…yeah.” Lori was leaning into the _kinda gross_ territory herself. “There’s like… a _lot_ of rats in there.”

“Don’t worry,” Gregg told the moderately musophobic mouse. “I’m pretty sure rats are like, more afraid of us than we are of them. They’ll probably just stay in their nest until we leave.” The fox mused over that claim for a moment, trying to remember if he was actually thinking about sharks. “And if not, I’ll totally intercept them before they swarm you.”

Visualizing that image was enough to draw a snicker from the seated mouse. “Well, thanks for that.”

“Least I could do for you just sort of saving my life back there.” Gregg reminded her, and Lori figured this promise to safeguard her from feral rodents was the canine’s sort of way of saying thanks.

“In all fairness, you probably wouldn’t have died. But I’ll still take an anti-rat bodyguard.” Something had been tugging on the back of Lori’s mind, and now that the fox had brought the incident back up, she figured she’d at least try to get some answers. “I still don’t get why you were so deadest on crossing that line, though.”

“It’s like… a thing.” Gregg answered noncommittedly.

“…A thing?” The request for elaboration was implied.

“Yeah.” The fox leaned back, propping open the wood door with his body. Lori waited for an answer while canine eyes scanned the floor, apparently searching for one. “I mean… I _knew_ it wasn’t a good idea. I guess, like, despite almost falling off twice before, it still just felt like something I _had_ to do.” He wasn’t making a very good case for himself, he knew, but the fox had never been great at vocalizing stuff like this. “It’s one of things where you’ve gotta do it, even if it’s dangerous. Maybe even a bit _because_ it’s dangerous, ya know?”

 “…No?” The teenage mouse looked at the other cautiously. Which was fair. “I mean… that sounds like some pretty reckless thinking right there.”

“…I guess so.” Gregg felt like he was listening to Angus lecture him about being too spontaneous; to some degree, him _(and Lori)_ were probably right. _But still…_ “I just wanna make sure I’m doing all I can to find Mae.”

Lori hummed, recognizing the sentiment. _Hell,_ she felt it too. It was the whole reason the mouse was here, inside the forgotten tomb of an interspecies-impregnated parade float. But thankfully, the rodent could think more rationally about the situation. “Risks like that don’t help her. We’d probably cover more ground taking the safe route than having a near-death experience every twelve feet.”

“I get that.” That was pretty obvious, retroactively, but even hindsight couldn’t stomp out the fox’s way of thinking. The reason for it was much more deeply-seated than any logic could expel.

“Do you?” Lori joked. “Cause it just seems like you just lack any sense of self-preservation.”

“Thank you,” Gregg rebuffed.

“That’s not a compliment.”

"I'm choosing to think of it as you calling me selfless, as opposed you calling me stupid." Gregg would gladly launch himself off the side of a roof if he thought it might help their chances of getting Mae back, but so far, there’d been nothing to indicate that to be the case.

Lori chuckled, exasperated but amused. “That’s one hell of a way to look at it.” There were few things as _selfless_ as plummeting down from the telephone lines when the mild inconvenience of a fire escape was only a short climb down away.

Yet the mouse didn’t seem to realize how serious the fox was: “I wanna throw everything into finding her. Even the stuff that seems like it might not matter. Cause whenever I hesitate, or second-guess myself, that’s more time Mae spends… wherever.”

“You know… doing what’s _dangerous_ won’t help her any more than doing what’s _best_.” Lori tried to give the canine a kind word of advice. “Just because they’re both doing something doesn’t make them the same.”

“Either way, it’s better than doing nothing at all.” The words resonated throughout the room, and piecing it together, the mouse began to recall the tale of another cat’s disappearance. “And when Casey went missing, that’s exactly what I did.” The mouse needed no context to understand: even before Mae’s friends had inducted her in with the story of their descent into the mines, Lori had been well versed in Possum Springs’ recent disappearance. “No matter what, I can’t let myself make the same mistake.”

Suddenly the source of the fox’s carelessness became clear. Just as suddenly, Lori lost track of what she was supposed to say in response.

Silence reigned. The mouse seemingly decided to accept her place on the floor of the disgusting rat cave because _why not_ –she was already sitting, so may as well double down on the comfort-for-hygiene tradeoff by leaning against the peeling wall of paint. Even the rats’ squeaking was put on break so that the two might have enough time to wallow in guilt and uncertainties.

“That wasn’t your fault.” Finally, she spoke; the mouse’s voice was small, but easily permeated the quiet. “No one would have expected you to look for him.” The words of comfort drew no answer from the fox; gulping, Lori reached for more. “The police heard someone say he hopped a train.”

“But I should have looked for him.” Even when it’d happened, all those months ago, some part of Gregg’s mind _knew_ he should have been looking for him. “I knew him. Not the cops. Not whoever _thought_ they saw him hop a train. I was his _best_ friend–if anyone should have been looking for him at all, it should have been me.” _But it wasn’t._

“You can’t blame yourself for what the cult did.” Lori attempted to rationalize, despite the dry, tight lump in her throat. “Even if you looked, it wouldn’t have changed–”

“You don’t know that.” _He_ didn’t even know that. “I do blame myself, cause I didn’t look. So don’t blame me for pulling out all the stops in the search of Mae.”

“…Alright.” The soft word of defeat slipped from the mouse’s jaw. She couldn’t argue with the fox–didn’t know _how_ to–even if she didn’t agree with his philosophy. He was too deadest on blaming himself, and the weight of this conversation now bore heavily over the mouse. The only option seemed to let the pervasive stillness continue.

So, they did. The two stood and sat wordlessly, trapped in internal ruminations until a rebellion of cries sounded from the ragged wooden float, reminding them of their surroundings and the mission still at hand.

“Come on.” Lori looked up toward the voice and found the fox’s paw outstretched toward her. The awkward, stifling veil of guilt had faded–for now at least–and it seemed like the pair were ready to make a move on. Chances were, they’d exhausted every corner of this space: if this truly was Mae’s hiding place, after all the time they’d spent there only to come up emptyhanded, the cat very clearly must not have wanted not to be found.

Taking the orange paw before her, Gregg hoisted the younger mammal to her feet. In silent agreement, the two bade farewell to what was most plainly an unchecked breeding grounds for rats and disease. There were plenty of other, _cleaner,_ secret hideaways and uninhabited locations above the surface of Possum Springs left for the pair to explore–and many more powerlines to circumvent.

* * *

_Clink._

The plastic clank as the overworked officer hung up the station’s landline phone resonated within her barren office space, accentuating the end of another phone call whose subject matter was becoming all too familiar. Sighing, Molly ran her paws over the top of her head, smooshing her ears in the process, combing through the clumps of fur. Under the pale moonlight which shimmered through the office’s window, she poured herself another mug of coffee: she’d taken to just bringing the entire pot to her desk after the brewer had prepared it at this point.

_Nine._

That last call made nine.

Molly glanced down at the notepad before her. From the call, she’d scribbled the information she’d need to file the formal report. On another page, she’d penned in the additional addresses to visit for tomorrow’s interviews with the missing persons’ families. _Anthony Waters and Dennis Scriggins._ She’d be spending most of the next day with the poorer, more cop-hating side of town.

_Fantastic._

The two-note knock on the open doorframe of her office undoubtedly belonged to her single coworker. Without removing the mug from sipping range and cutting off the precious caffeine supply which kept her functioning for the last 60 hours, Molly acknowledged her seventy-year-old elder in the most respectful manner she could manage.

“Howard, I swear to God, if you’re about to give me some more bad news, I will not hesitate to shoot out your last good joint.” The older ferret chuckled sadly, not fazed by Molly’s threat but well aware that his newest report would cause nothing but more anguish.

“We’ve got state troopers on the line.” The cat set her mug onto the desk as she slumped in annoyance.

“God damnit.”

“And the Saltztown Officer called. McCarthy said there’s no sign of anything unusual on Adams’ route back home from the construction site.”

“Of course there isn’t.” What Molly needed now was a lead–or some sleep. And while it seemed painfully obvious that she wasn’t getting one, she could at least hope for the former. God knows her the day’s first seven interviews hadn’t given her so much.

“Gonna be another of those nights, Missy.” The ferret knocked once more to let the cat know he was heading back to his office. “I’ll set another pot in the brewer.”

“Thanks, Howard…” The cat half mumbled, half groaned. It was always such a _delight_ to deal with state troopers: the feline just _loved_ those who simultaneously think they can do her job better than her and want nothing to do with it. Moral of the story was that if the state troopers were being called in, they thought you’d already failed.

With any luck, the cat may be able to stave them off for a few days. They’d only turn Possum Springs into more of a frenzy then it already was. Eyeing the remaining quarter of the coffee pot, Molly drank straight from the container, draining it. If she was gonna be stuck hearing how poorly she’d handled the situation and being prodded into relinquishing control of the investigation to the state for the next hour and a half, she needed all the aid she could get.

Lifting the second landline phone from its perch, the cat settled in for the long haul when she already heard squabbling on the other end.

“Officer Molly Thomson of Possum Springs speaking–and yes, we do get phone reception out here in the sticks. Which just means I get the pleasure of telling you to fuck off without driving twenty towns over.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I missed the 3 months mark by 1 day. Which is really bad, regardless. Sorry for the late updates, but this chapter *is* here, despite all odds.
> 
> Admittedly, there aren't a lot of developments for the core cast or plot in this chapter: that's coming in the next section, I can assure you. I needed a slower chapter to introduce some future arcs involving Molly and Candy, as well as properly induct Lori into the group while working out her character. (If anybody in the fic seems a bit OOC, please let me know in the comments. I'm still trying to work out dialogue and relationships for a lot of them). You have this chapter's slower pacing to thank for the title, as well as how it serves as the beginning of our story's second act, where the search for Mae is in full force.
> 
> You all know the drill: I encourage everyone to leave feedback (constructive criticism and encouragement are both very much appreciated!) It feels great to know I have active readers (and it motivates me to get new chapters out a bit quicker!). And finally, thank you all for reading!


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